


The Next Doctor?

by TheDoctorMulder



Series: Breaking Point [5]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Christmas, Episode: s04e14 The Next Doctor, F/M, First Christmas, Fluff and Angst, Multi, OT3, Pre-Episode: s04e14 The Next Doctor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2015-01-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 11:05:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 33,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2848646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDoctorMulder/pseuds/TheDoctorMulder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose and the Doctors do Christmas and meet a man that may be the future incarnation of the Doctor and a woman that might be Rose. But why don't they remember? TenXRoseXTentoo 5th in the Breaking Point Universe. Includes the Next Doctor rewrite. Used to be called First Christmas Back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Christmas, Tyler Style

**Author's Note:**

> This story was going to be part of a very long multichap, but seeing it's Christmas, well, there's no sense in putting this part of the story off. This one will stay at a T rating all the way through.
> 
> Timeline: 5th in the Breaking Point series, starts off after _Bonds_. If you haven't read _Breaking Point_ yet, you can get the basics of how the three of them came to be from chapter 1 of _The Secret Diary of Rose Tyler_. Rose also now holds the same bond with both Doctors, and she got her Vortex manipulator to work as a teleport again, though it still doesn't work for time travel in this universe.

Rose Tyler woke up to the sound of her mobile ringing. _'I fought the law and the law won, I needed money 'cause I had none, I fought the law and the law won'._ She picked it up and didn't even look at the screen. She knew who it was.

"Let it go," the Doctor mumbled behind her, one arm draped across her.

Rose had already flipped open the phone. "'Ello?" she slurred, still half asleep herself. She got up out of bed so that she could get away from the Doctor and not disturb his sleep anymore than it had been disturbed already. A quick glance at the clock kept on the bed stand showed that she had only been asleep about an hour and a half.

"Rose? Oh sorry sweethear', did I wake you?" her mother's voice came from the other side.

"Yeah, but you couldn't have known. What's up?" she asked, hoping that her mother knowing she had been asleep would make this call fairly quick and she could go back to bed easily. She stepped out into the hallway and closed the door of her bedroom behind her.

"Okay, I won't keep you long, then. This isn't important, but did the three of you have plans to come by for Christmas?"

"Thinking about the holidays early, are we?" she teased. Her mother was a Christmas fanatic, and it came out in full force in Pete's World when she finally had all the money she needed to decorate like she wanted. "It's, what, October for you?"

"Actually, it's mid December," her mother informed her. "You aught to know that, you were here just a couple of weeks ago, when the plants started growing in th-."

"Mum, stop!" Rose groaned. "I 'aven't been to Rome in late November, early December of 2012 yet, and nothin' 'bout plants. Don' say anything else abou' that visit, okay?"

"Alrigh', alrigh', don't get your knickers into a twist. Bleedin' time things."

"I didn't tell you that we were outta order?" Rose wondered. "And yes, you can tell me. I need to know that part."

"No, I wasn't told anything about that."

"Okay, then." Rose dropped all conversation about that visit, and made a mental note to tell the Doctor about it as soon as possible, so that they could handle whatever it was they handled.

"So, you comin' for Christmas?" her mother asked.

"Well, you know how the TARDIS doesn't always get dates right, we could be a day or two off, but I'll try to come. It's Christmas after all."

"Okay sweetheart, I'll let ya get back to your sleep. Lord knows you're a bear when you don' get much sleep," her mother replied on the other end of the line. "Love ya, Rose."

"Love ya too, Mum."

"Bye."

"See ya soon." She closed the phone and went back to her room.

When she crawled into bed, the Doctor wrapped his arm around her. "What was that about?" he wondered.

"Asking if we were gonna come by for Christmas," Rose replied.

"Of course we will, it's Christmas," the Doctor promised. He pulled her closer to him and whispered, "Now, that's enough about your mother." He kissed down her neck and pulled the hem of her pajama top up. He stopped and pulled back. "Christmas already? Wasn't it just October?"

"Yeah, apparently we're a bit out of order? We were there at the end of November or early December, something about plants growing."

"Oh, well, isn't that just wizard. I hate being out of order. We'll try to take care of the plant thing first, so we're not so mixed up. Now what were we doing?" He kissed her and rolled her on her back on the bed.

Close to half an hour later, the last thought Rose had just before she went back to sleep was about how terribly domestic the last 40 minutes had been.

XxXxXxXx

The Doctor had just started making breakfast when Rose came in. He didn't even look at her, just poured the coffee. He made it like she took it now, 2 sugars, no cream. He then turned around and held the mug out with a smile. She had already showered and dressed for the day, which was surprising. Normally she did all of that after breakfast.

"Ta," she said. She gave him a quick kiss and sat down at the table.

Okay, ready for the day already, and not visibly grumpy before caffeine. This didn't bode well.

"Mum called last night."

Yep, there it was. He listened to what she told him, about Christmas and being out of order and whatnot.

"Of course we're going for Christmas, I love Christmas! Wellll, two trips to see your mother, lovely." He made a funny face, and Rose laughed. "Presents, I've got to get presents. Your mother is easy to buy for, I've probably got something right here Pete would love. Tony, Tony, Tony boloney. Blimey, what do you get for a toddler?" He asked her. Rose knew her brother better than he ever would, she'd know what to get him.

"Tony will love modes of transportation, toys that move, and stuff that makes noise. If you get something that makes noise, have it be a low noise, or my mother won't like it," she told him. She sat back and thought for a couple seconds. "Nothing with a whole lot of pieces, and nothing with really small pieces."

He thought for a moment, then it came to him, the perfect present to get little Tony Tyler. He slid their breakfast onto three plates and sat them around the little table in the booth just as the other Doctor came in. He went straight for the coffee as Rose and the Doctor dug into their breakfasts. He was fully dressed for the day and ready to go as well. Just the t shirt under the suit jacket today. Good, he wouldn't have to wait on either one.

The other Doctor took a bite of his breakfast burrito and asked the daily question, "So, what are we up to today?"

"Presents!" he replied happily.

His other self groaned. "Do we have to do that now?"

"No time like the present," he punned. He got eye rolls from both Rose and his counterpart. "Get it done quickly, like a plaster. Besides, we love Christmas!"

 _"I've got ideas for Jackie, Peter, and Tony,"_ he contacted his counterpart mentally, _"What are we getting for Rose?"_

His twin sent him back three images. All were really good presents. And after a quick mental back and forth, and a chiming in of the TARDIS, they agreed to give her two of them, from both of them, and save the last one for later.

XxXxXxXx

The part human Doctor stepped outside the TARDIS into the crowded marketplace and took in the surroundings. Rose and his other self stepped out behind him. They couldn't get either one of Rose's presents from here, but everything else could be obtained.

They split up, so Rose could pick presents for each of them. While they were split up, he knew that his other self had taken the TARDIS to the location where he could pick up one of Rose's presents. When he left, he felt Rose's wave of apprehension.

 _"Rose, everything okay?"_ he asked her, worried that she found trouble. She was so very jeopardy friendly.

 _"Did you feel the TARDIS?"_ she asked, a little panicked. Crap, they had both forgotten that Rose could feel the TARDIS as well.

He sent her a wave of reassurance. _"I'm sorry. We thought that he could do that without you knowing. He took the old girl to go pick up your present from us. Don't worry, he'll be right back."_

_"Oh, okay."_

The panic disappeared, but the anxiety was still there a bit. That's when it hit him that she was still worried that the other him might leave them behind somewhere. He knew that it partially stemmed from her insecurities, but a large part of it stemmed from actions that they both had committed in the past. They were both idiots, and he resolved to make sure she knew her worth, and to make sure his other self knew that she was still worried.

Barely a minute later, their home rematerialized, and he felt her relax completely. He shut down the link with Rose as much as he dared, and focused on his link with the other Doctor.

_"Everything go okay?"_

_"Oh, yes."_ he replied. _"I'm certain she'll love it."_

They spoke for a moment more, then stopped when Rose found the other Doctor.

3 hours, 28 minutes after stepping out of the TARDIS (he wasn't sure exactly how many seconds, he lost track for a moment when Rose was eating a chocolate covered banana), they made their way back.

Rose had found some beautiful wrapping paper with swirls on it. This was good, because they had both forgotten wrapping paper. They were sure that there was none on the TARDIS. She said that the pattern reminded her of one of his ties and she had to get it.

The three of them wrapped presents to her family together, laughing at what they had each gotten.

"Okay, that's it. Now I have to go wrap your prezzies," Rose told them when they were finished. Since the wrapping began, she had been getting more and more excited, and it was infectious.

"Rooose!" they both protested.

"Do we have to wait?" his other self asked petulantly.

"We're opening them in an hour, anyway," he pointed out.

"Yes, you have to wait, and yes, I have to wrap them. It's part of the fun!" With that, she walked out of the room, carrying the rest of one tube of paper, some tape, and one of the pairs of scissors.

As soon as she was gone, the Doctors worked on wrapping her presents.

XxXxXxXx

It was early Christmas morning, and Jackie Tyler was baking cinnamon rolls. She baked two trays, because knowing those daft aliens, they'd eat a tray all by themselves.

Pete was occupied with Tony. His task was to wrestle the little one into a suit and tie for the family picture. Good luck with that. Just a minute before, she had seen him streak past the door of the kitchen wearing nothing but his trousers.

A knock sounded at the door, just as she put the second tray into the oven, and she rushed to the door. When she opened it, she saw her daughter and both Doctors. Rose was wearing a red dress that looked like it could have been one of the dresses she had been forced to wear to the Vitex events. When she had wore the nice dresses, she always complained about them, but here she was. She looked like she was happy, not just acting like it. Both Doctors were in their usual attire, but that was okay, it was classy enough to work for the family photo. The Doctor in the brown suit (that was the original one, right?) carried a large red Santa sack that looked like it held presents.

She hoped that none of them got messy or noisy toys for Tony.

"Merry Christmas Mum!" Rose chirped and threw herself into her arms. She was all excited. Rose always got excited over Christmas.

"Merry Christmas sweethear'," she replied back. Rose pulled back and went into the house. Jackie then noticed that the part human had attempted to slip past her. "Uh, uh, you come here." She grabbed his sleeve and pulled him into a hug. For a moment, he was stiff, then he relaxed into it and hugged her back.

"Merry Christmas, Jackie," he murmured.

She pulled back from him and allowed him to go into the house, then turned on the other Doctor. He stood there with a big dopey grin on his face. "Merry Christmas Jackie!" he said brightly. His smile even got into his voice. He then held out his arms for a hug, something he hadn't done since he regenerated into that body. She stepped into his arms and hugged him.

"Merry Christmas, you daft alien."

When she pulled back, he bent down to pick up the sack of presents. "I come bearing gifts," he announced.

She directed him to the tree, where he immediately put the presents from the bag under the tree among the other gifts. The paper covering all of the gifts had a familiar pattern on it, dark blue with silver swirls, and Jackie couldn't place the pattern.

She went back to check on Tony and Pete and found that her husband had been able to get their son into his shirt and jacket, but Pete was sure that the tie wasn't going to happen. The toddler then rushed out of the room and into the living room where the presents were.

XxXxXxXx

"What's up Tony Baloney?" Rose said when her brother came bounding into the room, he was wearing a black suit, minus the tie, but from the way his collar was sticking up, she was sure that he was supposed to have one.

Tony ran to his sister and nearly knocked her over. "Wose!"

"I see Mum an' Dad're tryin' to get you dressed."

"But I'm already dressed!" he whined.

"Mum wants a family pic, Little Monster. You need the tie." She held out her hand to her Dad, who dropped the tie into it.

"Do I have to?" Tony pouted.

"Yes, Little Man, do this for me, please?" Rose asked. The toddler relented, and Rose quickly did the tie up. "There you go," she said when she was finished. "You look smart." She gave her brother a hug.

"Alright, Tony, you wanna help me check on the cinnamon rolls?" her mother asked. Tony bounded off behind her.

When they left, Pete looked at Rose and thanked her.

"Oh, it was no problem."

"You know, you're really great with him."

"Oh, Dad, don't you start in too," Rose whined.

"I'm not, but if you could tell your mother that I mentioned something, that would be helpful." With those words, Rose and both Doctors burst out laughing.

"Same old Jackie Tyler," the Doctor in brown commented.

Pete went off to check on Tony, which left Rose and both Doctors alone. She sat on the couch right between her Doctors, and each of them automatically took a hand. The bond was still settling between her and the part human Doctor, and they gave in to the connection and allowed their emotions to pass between one another. She felt a slight bit of worry and doubt coming from him. Come to think of it, she felt the same coming from the other Doctor as well.

"What's wrong?" she asked both of them.

"You mean other than the fact that we're in your mother's house and I'm not sure if she knows about us yet, and I'm determined to keep this face for a bit longer?" the Time Lord replied.

"Yes, other than that."

"Well, you are really good with children," the Doctor wearing blue whispered.

"So?" Rose stated suspiciously.

"You'd make a great mother," the brown-suited Doctor replied.

"I'd make a terrible mother," Rose declared.

"No, you wouldn't, you'd be brilliant at it," he affirmed.

"We've seen you with children, time and time again," the other Doctor agreed, then added, "And we wonder if, maybe, you wanted that."

She yanked her hands out of theirs and looked back and forth between then incredulously. "You've seen me with other people's children, and my brother, for shor' periods of time, and sen' back to their parents. You 'ave never seen me near a kid for a long period o' time. 'Snot pretty. My brother woul' notta acted like that if I'da been 'ere everyday, or mos' everyday, I assure you." She leaned back with a sniff. "Righ' little s-" Tony ran into the room. "-terrors."

Both Doctors cracked up at that, and the tension between the three disappeared. Jackie then produced a camera and balanced it on the back of the sofa as she directed everyone to stand in front of the tree so they could take a family picture. After a bit of jostling around, and three shots, they finally had a decent picture where everyone's heads were in place.

XxXxXxXx

Pete brought a tray of cinnamon rolls out to the living room, and everyone grabbed one. They had all finished their first ones, and the Doctors were on their seconds when his wife announced that it was finally time to open presents. She went to the base of the tree and grabbed out the first box she could get hold of- one of the blue and silver swirly packages the Doctors and his daughter brought.

"Oh, it's for Tony!" She handed the package to their son and he tore right into it. It was crayons shaped like various types of space ships, about twenty in all.

The next package was his, and inside, he found a tool kit, with tools for small, delicate electronics. He had to ask what a couple of the pieces were, because he had never seen them before, and the Doctor wearing the blue suit promised him that he'd give him a full demonstration later.

As he watched his family, and he was including the Doctors in that, he mused on how he almost didn't have any of this, any of them. He would be forever grateful for his second chance family. He had his wife,  who was kind and fierce. His son was smart. He had a daughter who wasn't his, but he had started to actually feel like her father. Apparently, he also had two almost sons in laws. It was a bit of a weird relationship, but apparently, they were both the same man, and both had saved the universe-multiverse really, so he couldn't complain about them not being good enough for Rose.

Rose received a small blue and silver box from the Doctors, and peeled the paper off of it. inside was a wooden box with a hinge that was shaped sort of like a bracelet box. Before she opened it to see what was inside, the Time Lord Doctor told her, "It's from both of us, and the TARDIS, really, she wouldn't want to have been left out of that."

Pete didn't even pretend to understand that. He knew, from Rose's descriptions, that the TARDIS was alive, but he didn't understand how it could give a present.

With an excited grin, Rose opened the box. And shrieked. She hugged both Doctors, who both looked smug.

"Well, what'd ya get?" Jackie asked. Rose had still not taken the item out of the box so everyone could see.

Rose opened the box back up and pulled out a small, silver pipe with gold fittings and what looked like a red gem on the tip of it. Other than the colors, it looked just like the Doctor's little tools, sonic screwdrivers. "They made me a screwdriver!" Rose said, excitedly.

After a few more presents, Rose handed the Doctors both their gifts from her at the same time. She had gotten each of the Doctors jars of dragees, in various colors. Included in each package was a jar of metallic silver dragees, known better to the Doctors as edible ball bearings.

"Brilliant!" both of them exclaimed.

"No one else in the galaxy has ever thought to make these," the Doctor in blue informed everyone. Both popped open their jars and ate a few right then.

XxXxXxXx

Rose was handed her last present, a small box wrapped in the blue paper that meant that someone from the TARDIS had wrapped it. Both Doctors were looking smug again, and she knew it was something good.

"This one is also from both of us," the Doctor in brown told her when his counterpart handed it to her.

"Try to guess what it is," The one in blue said.

She knew that she'd never be able to guess in a million years, but she tried. She shook the box, there was only a little bit of shifting it sounded like the box was pretty full. She listened to the box, for anything mechanical. Nothing. Finally, she admitted, "I give up."

"Ah, you'd have never been able to guess it in a million years anyway." The Doctor in blue chuckled.

"The box is a misdirection," the one in brown added, giving a magician type wave. "Open sesame."

Rose enjoyed their antics. Laughing, she opened the top of the box and saw what they meant. The box was bigger on the inside. What looked like a box close to fifteen centimeters cubed was only that dimension at the opening. The inside of the box was really long.

She pulled out what was inside of it and gasped. It was a katana, with a white and gold wrapped handle and scabbard. It looked just like her old one, except for a wolf stamped in the end, there was a small wolf charm. And her name was written on the base of the blade in circular Gallifreyan. In the same spot on the other side of the blade was another symbol, one that she had never seen before.

"What is this?" She wondered.

"Your name," the Doctor in brown told her. At the same time that he said in her mind, _"One side is your given name, and the other is your chosen name."_ The circle on the other side of her name said, "Bad Wolf"

How did you do dat?" Tony asked. "Are you magic like Mary Poppins?" While she admired the sword, Tony had grabbed the box it had come out of and was attempting to figure it out.

"Nope, no magic Tony, just technology," the Doctor in blue told him. "You see, technology that is really advanced can look like magic."

There was only one present left, for Tony. It was from one of the Doctors, and was a model glider from Yunolanda. The glider really flew like a paper airplane, and it was made of a plastic like substance that wouldn't break from landings.

XxXxXxXx

Jackie went to check on the Turkey for dinner while Tony played with his new model plane. A moment after she closed the oven door, the Doctor wearing the blue suit and Rose came in. They each held a bundle of wrapping paper picked up from the floor and were giggling. She directed them to the bin where they could put the paper.

"Well, you certainly seem to 'ave more manners than the other one, at least," she told the Doctor.

"Oh, Jackie, I'm only being good for goodness sake, if anything, I'm extra rude," he told her, honestly.

"He really is," Rose told her. 

She noticed the mistletoe just over his head and wondered when Pete put it there. He had tried to put it there earlier, but she kept him from doing so, or so she thought.

"What? Do I have something in my hair?" he wondered.

"Vanity, thy name is Doctor," Rose teased.

"No, Pete put the mistletoe in the doorway anyway," she told him.

He looked up at it, then back at her. "So he did! Doorways are a great place for mistletoe." He then looked down at Rose and bent down. The kiss was sweet and lingering. "There, the mistletoe got some use after all." He then froze and looked over at her. "Um-"

"Rose, can you give us a minute, please?" she asked her daughter, who looked apprehensive at leaving the Doctor there.

"Promise you won' 'urt 'im," she ordered and pointed her finger at her mother.

Jackie rolled her eyes. "I won't 'urt 'im, happy? Go." She waved Rose out with her spoon like it was a wand.

Rose left, with a significant look at the Doctor. She swore those two could say many things without ever opening their mouths.

"Um, Jackie, I just wanna say that you need to remember I only have one life-" the Doctor started, a little panicked.

"Shut it," she commanded. She swore she could hear his teeth click together when he complied. "Do you love 'er?" She could tell that he wasn't suspecting that.

"Of course I do, Jackie, I think I always have, actually, but-" He cut himself off and backed up when she came forward and flung her arms around him.

"'Sabout time you admitted it." She backed off and fixed him in her gaze. "Now, has the other one said it too?"

"Um-" he looked terrified, and she had to admit that she enjoyed having a man who took down several armies of Daleks terrified of her. But she wasn't going to make the poor man suffer.

"I know that she's with both of you, you plum. It's obvious."

"Um, and you're not killing us?" he said in a higher pitched voice.

She laughed. "Lord knows an alien isn't exactly the first choice for my daughter, I mean, you're not 'uman. Oh this you might be part human, but you're still an alien. And this meta thingy is weird, but I've come to accept that you are really both the same man. And this, whatever you 'ave with my daughter is...odd, but if anyone could 'andle two o' ya, 's 'er. I dunno 'ow she handles one o' you, but there it is."

"Your daughter's brilliant, Jackie," he told her, obviously relieved.

"Ground rules. One. No shagging in my house." She brandished her spoon like it was a knife.

"I'd never."

"Good, don't. Two. No running off after other women, especially French mistresses," Jackie accused.

"Now that was blown way out of proportion, I had to save time!"

"But she still felt like you went off with the accomplished woman, understand?"

"I understand, and I try to make up for it all the time, Jackie, we both do."

She nodded. That answer was good enough for her. "Three. I will not have a grandchild with tentacles or suckers, you hear me?"

"Um, we're not planning on kids right now, but if it ever happens, I'm positive that there will be no tentacles involved, and the only sucker will be a mouth, a normal mouth, that is," he stated seriously.

She burst out laughing, and he chuckled a bit as well. "I'll think of more later, go get the other one," she ordered.

"Yes, ma'am." he disappeared quickly.

Not even a minute later, the other Doctor- the original one with the two hearts- came into the kitchen. He tried, and failed, at nonchalant.

"Come in, an' 'ave a seat, Doctor," she told him while stirring the pots on the stove.

He complied and waited for her to come over. When she did, she brought two mugs over, with tea steeping in them. The Doctor accepted one and asked, "So, what is it you want to talk to me about, Jackie?"

"Do you love her?" she began her interrogation while she pulled the tea out of her cup.

"Yes," he simply said, with no hesitation, as he looked at her right in the eye. She didn't expect him to answer so quickly and was taken aback for a moment.

"Even though she's gonna get old?" she queried pointedly. An odd look passed over his face right then, and she didn't know what it was, but then he turned serious again.

"Yes, Jackie, even though she's going to get old. I've always loved her, and I'll love her until the end of my days."

That was enough for her. "Okay, I'm giving you the same ground rules I gave the other one: One, No shagging in my house."

"I wouldn't do that."

"Two, no runnin' off with another woman, and if you have to protect the fabric of time, either take Rose with ya or make sure she knows what's goin' on."

"A lesson learned the hard way, I assure you."

"Three, no alien gran-babies with tentacles or weird bits."

"Jackie Tyler, I assure you, if Rose ever decides to have children, they will look as human as you do, more so, maybe." The last bit was said with the corner of his mouth twitched up.

"Oi!" She glared at him for a moment. "Four. Never leave her behind."

"I promise."

"Good. I think we're done here."

"Do you need a hand with anything?" he asked, which shocked her.

She stared at him with suspicion. "You're both bein' awfully polite."

"It's Christmas! Tomorrow, I'll go back to normal."

"Okay, then. You can help me with this turkey. Just baste it." She handed him the turkey baster.

XxXxXxXx

After a bit more Christmas cheer, which included dinner and some games, Rose and the Doctors finally took their leave. Rose put her katana in the bigger on the inside box, as it probably wouldn't do to be seen carrying it down her parent's street. She wasn't wearing any of her jackets, so she couldn't just stick the sword in one of her pockets.

The Doctor had loaded up their various presents in the Santa bag he had brought with him, which was not bigger on the inside. They walked down the street towards the TARDIS, and both Doctors shared their encounter with Rose's mother with Rose. Rose herself had an encounter as well, her mother telling her that she could tell her everything.

"Your mother knows nothing about your abilities?" the Time Lord asked her.

"No."

"Why not?" the Doctor on the other side asked her.

Rose put her head down and concentrated on where she stepped. She walked out in front of the Doctors.

"Rose?" one of them prompted.

She stopped, and without looking up, she confessed, "I'm afraid of what she'll say."

"Why?" This time, the voice came from right behind her.

She took a deep breath. "The day of the Battle of Canary Wharf, when you were out with those cone things, and I was in the TARDIS with my mum, she told me that I was changing, that I wouldn't be myself anymore, and I wouldn't even be human." She stood there, closed her eyes, and swallowed thickly as one of the Doctors came around to her front. "She said it like the thought repulsed her. I can't tell her, she wouldn't understand."

The Doctor in front of her held her closely, and the one behind came in as well. They stood there in a three way hug for a moment, then the Doctors pulled back. The one in front of her tilted her face up toward his and gave her a light kiss. When he kissed her, she knew it was the full Time Lord. He pulled back and gave her a soft, sad smile. Both Doctors then took her hands, and they walked to the TARDIS.

"Who knows about you?" The part human Doctor asked.

"Um, in this universe, Dad knows everything I knew before your tests, Mickey knows about the healing."

"Pete knows everything?" The part human asked, surprised.

"Yeah, he 'ad to know, you know? Being the head of Torchwood and all. Anytime a new anomaly was discovered among the staff, he was told. But even without tha', I woulda told him. He was the only one who seemed to understand me."

They were at the TARDIS, and the part human grabbed his key and opened the door. When they were all inside, the Doctor dropped his bag on the floor, and the three of them sent the TARDIS into the vortex. Once settled, Rose grabbed her katana out of the bag, and looked it over again.

"Like it?" The Time Lord queried.

"Oh, I love it, but you could have put it in a regular box, and I'd have still never figured it out. I would have never thought that you would have gotten me a weapon."

"He showed me that memory you showed him," he told her, nodding to the other Doctor. "And the TARDIS made you that holder for it in your training room."

"We also know that you're capable of handling that weapon, and that you know when to use it," the part human interjected.

"And a sonic too! There's something I'da never thought you'd give to someone. let them use it, yeah, but not give!"

Both Doctors chuckled at that.

"Well, he suggested it, and the TARDIS seemed to agree, so..." he trailed off when the TARDIS lit up.

"Thank you, Gorgeous," Rose told her, running her hand over the coral. She got a pleased feeling.

Just then, the part human Doctor yawned, and Rose followed suit a moment later.

"What'd ya 'ave to go and do that for?"

"It's been a long day! You think I wanna sleep half my life away?" he complained.

"Oh, it's only a third," she retorted. She turned around and asked the Time Lord, "You comin' tonight?"

"Yeah, I could sleep." He followed them.

That night, they slept in the Doctors' room, with Rose sandwiched in the middle.

She woke up needing to use the loo. She maneuvered out of bed, careful to not disturb either Doctor, who would both need to sleep longer than her tonight.

When she returned, they had moved closer together, and the part human Doctor had thrown his arm over the other one.

She quickly grabbed her phone and snapped a picture of the two of them snuggling together. It might not be something ever seen again, you never know.

Rose then climbed back into bed, on the part human's side this time. She wound up sleeping almost as long as both of them that morning.

XxXxXxXx

The next day, they decided to use the randomizer again. They stepped outside of the TARDIS, which was parked just under a stone arch.

It was snowing, and the three of them walked through a marketplace, which was decorated for Christmas.

The Doctor in brown saw a boy and asked, "You there, boy. What day is this?"

"Christmas Eve, sir."

The Doctor in the black trench coat asked, "What year?"

"You thick or something?" the boy questioned him.

"Oi. Just answer the question," he told him, affronted that anyone questioned his intelligence.

"Year of our Lord 1851, sir."

The Time Lord Doctor then commented, "Right. Nice year. Bit dull."

Suddenly, they heard a woman shout, "Doctor!"


	2. Next Doctor?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, you guessed it, I'm trying out an episode rewrite. I'm confident I can add enough that it's not boring.
> 
> This could get confusing, so I'll continue to differentiate the twin Doctors as I always have. The next Doctor will be called either next Doctor, or new Doctor.

 It was snowing, and the three of them walked through a marketplace, which was decorated for Christmas.

The Doctor in brown saw a boy and asked, "You there, boy. What day is this?"

"Christmas Eve, sir."

The Doctor in the black trench coat asked, "What year?"

"You thick or something?" the boy questioned him.

"Oi. Just answer the question," he told him.

"Year of our Lord 1851, sir."

The Time Lord Doctor then commented, "Right. Nice year. Bit dull."

Suddenly, they heard a woman shout, "Doctor!"

The Doctors grinned and ran, with Rose right on their heels. They ran into an alleyway, where a local woman stood in front of a pair of doors. She hadn't seen them yet and backed away from the doors slowly, looking nervous. "Doctor!" she yelled.

She had deep chocolate skin with a nice complexion, and her hair was naturally an Afro. What struck Rose the most was her attire. She was dressed in clothing of the time, but not anywhere near warm enough for the weather.

The Time Lord got there first and pulled her back. "Don't worry, don't worry. Stand back, what have we got here?"

Suddenly, the door rattled, and a growling was heard.

"Ooh," the Doctor in blue commented. "What is this?" He was intrigued.

"Uh, oh." Rose had a bad feeling about this.

"OK, we've got it," the Doctor in brown told the woman. "Whatever's behind that door, I think you should get out of here."

She ignored him and yelled, "Doctor!" again.

"Um, standing right here," the Doctor in the blue suit and black trench coat put in. "Hello!" he greeted and wiggled the fingers of his right hand.

The woman looked back and forth between the two of them. "Don't be stupid, who are you?" she asked, as if they were both daft.

"We're both the Doctor," The Time Lord retorted, in the same manner.

She rolled her eyes. "Well, there can't be three o' ya!"

"You'd be surprised," Rose muttered. She had a pretty good idea of what was going on now.

Just then, a man ran up to them He looked a little older than her current Doctors and wore a tan coat, red waistcoat, a gold cravat, and a white shirt. His clothing also matched the period, which Rose found odd, but then again, with the exception of the Chucks. Her second Doctor could fit in anytime in the 20th century, her third, could fit in the same periods and the earlier part of the 21st century. Her first Doctor could fit in starting when leather jackets became popular, whenever that was. And once in a great while, she could get her pinstriped Doctors to dress in period clothes.

"Where the hell have you been?" The woman demanded.

In true Doctor fashion, he didn't answer her question. "Don't worry. Stand back. What have we got here, then?"

Rose could believe that this was the Doctor.

"Hold on, hold on. Who are you?" the Doctor in the brown suit asked. Wait, he didn't know this other version of the Doctor? Must be a future version, then.

"I'm the Doctor. Simply the Doctor. The one, the only and the best," the new Doctor said, pompously. "Rosita, hand me my sonic screwdriver," he ordered.

"What?" both Rose and the Time Lord Doctor said at the same time. Rosita? Was Rosita her? So she could regenerate! Wait, why did Rosita seem not able to recognize the Doctors or herself? That didn't make any sense. Unless it was so far into the future that her memory couldn't remember who she was, or she hadn't remembered yet. No, not possible, that's why she did the pictures, and her journal, and all, to help with the frailty of human memory. She didn't want to forget her part human Doctor, or her family, or- the part human sensed her thoughts and gave her hand a squeeze in an attempt to send comfort. She hadn't realized that she was projecting. The reassurance coming from him helped her settle down enough to pay attention to what the other two Doctors were doing.

"Job for a what Lord?" The brown suited Doctor asked, incredulously.

" _He's you, Dumbo,"_ she heard the blue suited Doctor send to their current Time Lord telepathically. While she had an open link to one, she could hear that one talking to the other, that was new.

The rattling door burst open to show a shaggy bodied creature with a metal mask. The metal mask looked horrifyingly familiar.

"oooh, that's different," Rose's Time Lord enthused while he pulled out his sonic.

At the same time, the new Doctor and the blue Doctor pulled theirs out as well and happily said, "Oh, that's new."

"Allons-y!" All three Doctors cried out.

"Ahhh, the traditional yuletide invasion, now I really feel like I'm home!" Rose exclaimed, gleefully, despite the obvious evidence of Cybermen here.

Rose stood behind them with Rosita, enjoying the display in front of her. She had her new sonic out as well, but not pointed at anything, yet. She didn't know the settings like the others, but the Doctors told her that morning at breakfast that her's had a telepathic interface keyed to her and she could just point and think for most applications. A quick glance at Rosita showed her to not have one out.

Either Rosita was not her, or future her had lost or broken her screwdriver. She did have the new Doctor's in hand. It must have been recent, then.

"I've been hunting this beast for a good fortnight. Now step back, sir," The new Doctor commanded, a bit pompously. Oh great, this future Doctor was pretentious, well, even more so.

The Cybercreature jumped over the five of them and clung to the building.

"It's got the brain of an animal!" Rose realized.

"Some primitive conversion, like they used the brain of a cat or dog," the brown suited Doctor thought out.

"And here we thought they were gone for good. Shoulda known, really" the Doctor in the blue suit added.

"We'll talkin's all very well," the new Doctor rolled his eyes and chided them. "Rosita!"

"I'm ready," she told him. She gave him a rope, and he swung then end of it. It had been tied into a lasso.

"Now, watch and learn!" He let go of the rope and it flew up over the Cybercreature. "Excellent!" he exclaimed as he wrapped the rope around his arm for better purchase. "Now then, let's pull this timorous beastie down to Earth!" The Cyberanimal scaled the wall. Instead of pulling the creature down, he was pulled up with it. "I might be in a little bit of trouble!" he told the people below.

"Oh, nothing changes, I've got you!" The Doctor in brown ran up and grabbed the rope, in the hopes of being enough extra weight to pull them down.

Rose couldn't help but snort. "Well, if I wasn't already fairly convinced that you were the Doctor before, I am now."

"Gee, thanks," the part human Doctor sarcastically said. "Glad to see that my unwavering ability to bollocks things up has you convinced."

The cybercreature pulled up the Doctor in brown as well, and now both versions of him dangled from the rope. The part human Doctor had jumped up to help, but the end of the rope dangled just out of his reach.

"Move it!" Rose shouted, and the part human Doctor got out of the way just in time for Rose to run up towards the bit of wall that was sticking out next to where the Doctors hung. She jumped just as she got to the wall and bounced off of it. The motion was just enough to get a good grasp on the rope. If the thing the Doctors tried to tug down had moved forward a bit more, she wouldn't have been able to grab it.

She knew that they wouldn't be able to tug it down, not now that the thing was in the building, but she could try to stop it.

"What are you doing?" the Doctor in brown asked.

"Oh, you know me, just 'anging around," Rose replied sarcastically. "Whaddaya think I'm doin', ya plum? 'M tryin' ta help!"

"You idiots!" she heard Rosita exclaim below, more evidence that they might be the same person, but that was a mystery to be solved later.

"Perhaps if you could pull?" the new Doctor asked.

"I am pulling. In this position, I couldn't not pull, could I?" the Doctor shot back.

"Then I'd suggest you let go, sir," the new Doctor suggested. He then looked down and noticed Rose, who had put her feet on the wall and used it to slowly pull herself up. "And you too, madam! What are you doing! This is no task for a woman!"

"Oi mate. You don't want to do that!" the Doctor on the ground yelled up at him.

"I'm not letting you out of my sight, Doctor. Don't you recognize us?" Rose's Time Lord called up.

"No, should I? Have we met? This is hardly the right time for me to go through my social calendar!" the new Doctor shouted down.

"Seriously?" Rose interrogated the next Doctor. "Did you really just try to tell ME my place?" She growled, "'M gonna save your arse, then 'm gonna personally make sure ya regenerate inna someone who isn't...blimey, wha's the word? Misogynistic!"

The extra weight that Rose added to the rope had stopped the cybercreature for a couple of moments, and Rose thought that they were winning against it, but then it moved again. The sudden upward motion caused Rose to lose her footing on the side of the building and she now hung from the rope the same way both Doctors did. It reminded her too much of a certain barrage balloon.

"Rose, let go before you get hurt!" The Doctor in the brown suit cried out when her lower body dropped.

"As soon as you do!" she yelled back.

They rose faster now, closer to the window that the cyberanimal went through. A quick glance down showed that the Doctor and Rosita had disappeared from below. The ground receded at a rate that alarmed her. She knew that the Doctor, no matter what version, would never leave her in danger, real or imagined. He must have some sort of plan.

" _Doctor, where are you?"_ she reached out to him telepathically.

" _Headed up the stairs of the building you're dangling from,"_ he replied.

" _Whatever you're planning, hurry up, the next Doctor is going through the window on the top floor now!"_ she let him know, then returned her concentration to the matter at hand.

Both men quickly went through the window, and in a second, she was pulled through too. She tried to use the window's frame to hold herself in place, but the jerky motion of the rope combined with the speed of the beast made it impossible to do so. When she got through the opening and landed on her bum, she accidentally let go of the rope for a second.

Free of that weight, the cyberbeast sped up, pulling the Doctors faster. Rose made another grab for the rope, but between the pain in her hands and the speed of the rope, she was unable to get a good grip on the end before it was pulled out of her grasp.

She ran after them as they were pulled across the floor as if they were on sleds. She winced at the thought of the floor burn they were sure to have when this was over, and she was glad that she had lost her grip. The feeling lasted only a moment, though, as she realized what the cyberbeast was about to do. It ran to an open window on the other side of the building, and they were on the top floor.

The Doctor of her time line must have realized what was about to happen at the same time she did, because he yelled, "It's gonna jump!"

"We're gonna fall!" the other Doctor exclaimed.

Right after the realization was made, Rosita appeared, with the Doctor in the black trench coat on her heels. Rosita carried an ax. She saw what was about to happen herself, and ran into action. The rope was cut with one quick swipe of her ax.

The sudden stop made the Doctors tumble and a few seconds later, the shaggy cyber thing was out the window. When they stopped, they slowly got up with groans. When they were upright, they both laughed hard and hugged each other. Okay, you can touch your future or past self once you've regenerated, good to know. Rose wished again that she had kept hold of the rope, because that looked like fun, and in a second, she was laughing too.

The part human Doctor gingerly took the ax from Rosita, who watched the laughing Doctors with anger.

The five of them made their way down the stairs. On the way down, Rose pointedly told the new Doctor, "Next time, just let go."

"I was stuck!" he protested, which caused a new wave of laughter.

They stepped back outside and the Doctors, all three of them now, were laughing. Rose was watching them, worried now that she had a moment to think about what just happened.

" Well, I'm glad you think it's so funny. You're mad. All three of you!" She pointed to the Time Lords and Rose. "You could've got killed!"

"But, evidently, we did not," the new Doctor told her. He remembered his manners. "Oh, I should introduce Rosita. My faithful companion, always telling me off."

"Well, they do, don't they?" the Doctor in brown said, fondly. Then it clicked. "Rosita?" He gave Rose a significant look. "Good name. Hello, Rosita!" He gave her his little handwave.

" _Finally! I was beginning to think he had shorted out his brain when he met the future version of himself,"_ the blue suited Doctor thought to Rose, who had to stifle her giggle. He leaned the ax against a chunk of wood in front of the doors that the cyberbeast had come out of.

Rose examined her hands, they had burns from the rope, but not nearly as bad as they were the last time she had hung from a rope. They still hurt, though, but there was nothing she could do about it at the moment.

Rosita huffed, "huh. Now I'll have to go and dismantle the traps. All that for nothing. And we've only got 20 minutes till the funeral, don't forget. Then back to the TARDIS, right?" She walked off.

"Funeral?" the part human Doctor asked with great interest.

"Oh, long story. Not my own, not yet." He bent over in a bit of pain. "Oooh, I'm not as young as I was."

"Well, not as young as you were when you were me," the Doctor in brown quipped.

"When I was who?" he asked, confused.

"You really don't recognize us?" The part human asked, baffled.

"Not at all," he replied.

"But you're The Doctor. The next Doctor. Or the next-but-one. A future Doctor anyway," Rose's current Time Lord babbled. "You should recognize us."

"Oh," the new Doctor said, as if that explained everything.

"No, no, don't tell me how it happened. Although... I hope I don't just trip over a brick, that'd be embarrassing. Then again, painless. Worse ways to go, depends on the brick," he babbled, musing over the evidence of the demise of his current incarnation.

"You're gabbling, sir." He looked between the three of them. "Now, might I ask, who are you three, exactly?"

"No, I'm, uh... I'm just Smith, John Smith. And the handsome bloke in the blue suit is my brother, Giacomo. Well of course he's my brother, I mean who else would he be? He looks just like me!" He realized that he was babbling again.

" _Giacomo?"_ she heard the part human Doctor in her mind. _"Really?"_

" _I guess that's what you get for calling him Amadeus last week,"_ she replied. _"At least he called you handsome."_

" _Yeah, but that's also calling himself handsome, so it doesn't count."_

"Giacomo, that's an odd name for a British man," the new Doctor commented.

"Yes, yes it is. Our mother was from Venice." He cleared his throat. "Anyway, I go by my middle name, James. This is my lovely Rose, Rose Tyler." He said her full name with significance, and she could tell that he hoped it would jog the older Doctor's memory.

"But we've heard all about you, Doctor. Bit of a legend, if I say so myself," the Doctor in brown butted in.

"Modesty forbids me to agree with you, sir. But yes. Yes, I am," he agreed with an air of self importance. If he'd have still been the pinstriped Doctor, he'd have been straightening his tie.

"A legend with certain memories missing. Am I right?" Rose's Time Lord asked.

"How do you know that?" he queried.

"Because you've forgotten me," Rose whispered. There it was, the worst fear she had, that she was separated from the Doctor and he would forget her over time, or that he'd regenerate and not love her anymore.

"Great swathes of my life have been stolen away. When I turn my mind to the past, there's nothing." The new Doctor looked despondent as he admitted that he was suffering from amnesia.

"How far back are your memories?" Rose asked him.

"Since the Cybermen. Masters of that hellish wall-scuttler and old enemies of mine, now at work in London town. You won't believe this, Miss Tyler, but they are creatures from another world."

"You'd be surprised at what I believe, Doctor," she told him sincerely.

"It's said they fell onto London, out of the sky in a blaze of light. And they found me." He paused for a moment, looking anywhere but at them. "Something was taken, something was lost." He then turned to Rose and asked her earnestly, "What was I like? In the past?"

He took her hand in both of his and pressed it to his chest as his eyes searched her for answers. She felt something something off. Something wasn't-

"I don't think any of us should say," the part human Doctor interrupted her thoughts. "Sorry. You've really got to be careful with memory loss."

The new Doctor dropped Rose's hand and stepped back. He looked between the three of them. "It's funny, I talk of Cybermen from the stars and you don't blink."

The Doctor in brown suddenly jumped in one of his aha moments. "Ah, don't blink, remember that? Whatever you do, don't blink? The blinking and the statues? Sally and the angels? No?"

The new Doctor looked at the pinstriped one like he had just declared that the sky was currently royal purple. "You're a very odd man, Mr. Smith."

She could practically see the gears in both of the Doctors heads turning. "Hmm, I still am. Something's wrong here."

She knew what he meant, and she was certain that she knew what it was.

The new Doctor suddenly remembered something important. "Oh, the funeral!" he exclaimed. "The funeral's at two o'clock. It's been a pleasure, Mr Smith, Mr. Smith, and Miss Tyler." He grabbed her hand again and brought it to his lips so he could kiss her knuckles. He turned to walk away. "Don't breathe a word of it!"

"Oh, can't we come with you?" the part human Doctor spoke up.

The new Doctor turned around, not stopping his movements towards where he was going. "It's far dangerous. Rest assured, I shall keep this city safe. Oh, and, er... Merry Christmas!" He then took off.

"Okay, I'm following him," the Doctor in brown announced quietly before the other man had disappeared.

"You'll be noticed," Rose told him.

"Then I'll have to be sneaky."

"You are not sneaky. In fact, 'm certain you got less sneaky with regeneration, and that's saying somethin' seein' as 'ow you were never sneaky to begin with."

"Oi!"

"If you're goin', you'd better shift!" She hissed.

The Doctor moved to follow, and Rose and the part human Doctor followed as well.

" _He's not you,"_ she told them both telepathically in an effort to keep quiet as they were following the man. She felt their surprise at her declaration.

" _What changed your mind?"_ the Doctor in blue wondered.

" _Now, Rose, you know-"_ the Time Lord started.

" _If that's you in the future,"_ she interrupted, _"then where am I? And how come he doesn't remember any of us?"_

" _Maybe we got separated, it has happened before,_ " he reminded her, not that she needed reminding of that particular incident. _"Maybe you finally had enough of me and-"_

" _Don't even think it,"_ she growled in her mind. The three of them turned another corner and were almost spotted by Rosita. They ducked quickly.

" _And as for not remembering,"_ the other Doctor injected, _"I've had memory issues before, lost all of my memory a couple times in my 8th life. Maybe 'Rosita' has been brought along because of a bit of memory leaking through, or maybe you're Rosita. We still don't know if you can-"_

" _I thought that at first, but wouldn't I say something if I was!"_ she interrupted the oncoming babble.

" _Not if your memory was also compromised, or if you were trying to prevent or protect a paradox,"_ the Time Lord told her.

" _He really isn't you, though, unless you,"_ she indicated the part human Doctor, _"can regenerate after all or gain the ability again. And it's a thought I've given some credence to, stranger things have happened."_

" _Why do you say that?"_ the Doctor in blue queried.

" _Because that man,"_ she pointed to the 'new Doctor,' who was arguing with Rosita, _"has a pulse that indicates that he only one heart and he is far too warm."_

XxXxXxXx

The Doctor listened to Rose as she told them all of the evidence that had her convinced that this other man wasn't him. It was well thought out and logical. It made perfect sense, but there was still something off about it.

" _But I don't think he's you, either,"_ she told his counterpart. _"Because he has no telepathic ability as far as I can tell, and I checked as much as I know how. What I can't figure out is why he thinks he's you. Also, I'm wondering about the sonic screwdriver. I didn't get a good look, did either of you?"_

Okay, he was officially, properly impressed. They came to a wrought iron fence where they could see the other man and Rosita arguing.

" _No, I didn't,"_ he replied.

" _Me, either,"_ his twin admitted.

" _Are you deducting again, Lewis?"_

" _Ya betcha, Sarge."_

"The Doctor's companion does what the Doctor says. Off you go." They heard the other man say. Rosita left without much argument, and Rose herself would have been very, very angry if it was her.

He was pretty sure that Rose, no matter how many times she regenerated, or even if she lost her memory, would never, ever put up with being sent back to the TARDIS while he got himself into trouble.

" _Yeah, maybe that's not you, either,"_ the Doctor in blue conceded.

" _For right now, let's continue acting as if he was me, and see where that takes us,"_ the Time Lord suggested, to which both his counterpart and Rose agreed.

They followed the man to the house where he was breaking in. They went right through the front door, and no one on the street even gave them a second glance, assuming they were meant to be there. When his twin opened the door, Rose pulled out her own screwdriver and started to use it to help speed up the healing of her hands. The Doctor saw what she was doing and helped out with his own quickly. She'd been in pain and hid it since they were hanging from the building, and he hated himself for it. She knew what he was thinking, even without the telepathy, and just gave him her 'you're-an-idiot-quit-blaming-yourself' look. Which, of course, he ignored.

They made a beeline for the back door, where they could hear the other man attempting to open the door. The part human Doctor stepped right up to the door and opened it, revealing the other man. For a moment, he looked like a deer caught in the headlights until he realized who opened the door.

"Hello," his twin said.

"How did you three get in?" he asked, at a loss.

"Oh, I'm good at doors," the Doctor waved the question off, both metaphorically and physically. "Do you mind my asking, is that your sonic screwdriver?"

They finally got a good look at the device in his hands. It was a regular screwdriver of the period, with a wooden handle.

"Yeah," he said with a smile. "I'd be lost without it."

"But that's a screwdriver, how exactly is it sonic?" the blue suited Doctor asked.

"Well, er, it makes a noise." He hit it against the door frame to demonstrate. "That's sonic, isn't it?"

"Yes, yes, it is," Rose agreed.

He glanced around outside. "Now, since we're acting like common burglars, I suggest we get out of plain view."


	3. Memories

The 'new Doctor' glanced around outside. "Now, since we're acting like common burglars, I suggest we get out of plain view."

The part human Doctor stepped out of the way to let him inside, and as soon as the door was closed, they started looking about the house.

The Doctor in the brown suit asked the 'new Doctor', "This investigation you're doing? What's it about?"

"It started with a murder," he answered, dramatically.

"Oh, good!" he enthused, then realized how that would be taken. "I mean, bad, but whose murder?"

Rose and his other self came over to listen to the story he was about to tell.

"Mr Jackson Lake, a teacher of mathematics from Sussex. He came to London three weeks ago and died a terrible death."

"Was it Cybermen?" Rose asked.

"It's hard to say, his body was never found. But then it started. More secret murders. Then abductions. Children… stolen away in silence."

"So," the Doctor in blue queried, drawing out the word, "Who does this house belong to?"

The other man moved onto a different shelf and looked through items sitting on it. "The latest murder. The Reverend Aubrey Fairchild. Found with burns to his forehead, like some advanced form of electrocution."

"Who was this Reverend? Was he important?" the Time Lord asked.

The 'next Doctor' turned around and looked at the three of them. "You know, you lot ask a lot of questions," he commented, acting slightly annoyed with having to answer them.

"We're your companions!" the Time Lord replied.

"We're supposed to do that," the part human agreed. "Helps you think and stuff."

"The Reverend was the pillar of the community," the man finally answered. "A member of many parish boards. A keen advocate of children's charities."

"I hate that phrase, 'pillar of the community,'" The part human said, in nearly a whisper. "There's always something about them."

"Children again," the Time lord mused. "But why would the Cybermen want him dead?"

"What's his connection to the others?" Rose wondered aloud. "I mean to this Jackson Lake and the others who died."

The Doctor knew that this man in front of him wasn't a Time Lord, he had checked to make sure. Rose was right, the man was human, but there was still one possibility where this man was him, and Rose wouldn't know anything about that.

"It's funny," the 'new Doctor mused. "I seem to be telling you everything. As though you engendered some sort of... trust." He looked a bit unnerved at how quickly these people had wormed their way into his investigation. "You seem familiar, especially the two of you," he gestured to the twin Doctors. "I know your faces. But how do I know them?"

"I can't help but notice that you're wearing a fob watch," the Doctor in brown remarked. In his mind, he felt Rose's confusion. _"I'll tell you in a bit,"_ he thought to her.

"Yes," the man in question replied. "Is that important?"

"Legend has it that the memories of a Time Lord can be contained within a watch like that," he told him. "May I?"

The other man handed him the fob watch, with the chain still attached to his pocket. The Doctor held it in his hand, with his finger on the latch.

"It's said that if it's opened..." he paused, and popped open the watch. Instead of the golden light he had hoped would come out, bits an pieces of the watch flew out and scattered over the floor.

" _Well, there's another theory shot. Apparently you didn't fob yourself again. Which is good because it went sooo well last time,"_ his other self snarked in his mind. He felt his twin's and Rose's amusement coming through their links, both for different reasons, and shot them both a mental glare.

XxXxXxXx

"Or not," Rose smirked. She kneeled down to pick up the pieces of the watch and handed the pieces to their owner. "I think I saw a cog roll over there," she said, mostly to herself and walked over to the desk, where the piece of the watch should have went.

"It's more for decoration," the 'new Doctor' explained.

"Okay, then. Time to look for evidence of alien infiltration," the part human Doctor advised. He pulled his glasses off his face and rubbed his eyes before putting them back on.

She listened to the man who wasn't the Doctor explain what sort of things they should be looking for. She found the last piece of the watch at the foot of the desk and picked it up. She decided to look in the desk for anything that might help them figure out why someone would want to kill the Reverend. Or something from the Cybermen.

The part human Doctor came over to the shelf nearby and was in the process of searching it when she tried to open the desk. It was locked. With a quick look over to the 'new Doctor' to make sure that he was engrossed in his search, she unlocked the desk quickly.

"...but unlike any organism of the natural world." The man continued his description of what he thought they might be looking for. He stopped suddenly. "Shh! What's that noise?" he wondered.

Rose jerked her screwdriver back where he couldn't see it, and put it in her pocket.

"Oh, it's just me...whistling," the part human Doctor next to her covered for her. He followed it up with a funny impersonation of the sonic's noise that sounded nothing like it, and Rose had to keep her amusement from showing.

Rose opened the desk as if it had been unlocked all along, and inside, she found a metal cylinder. She'd never seen anything quite like it before.

"Look at what I found," she announced to the others. She held up the cylinder.

The Doctor in blue took it from her and looked it over while the other two came over to see what she had found.

"Different and metal, you were right," the Time Lord commented. "That is an info-stamp." He must have realized that they were still trying to play companion, and a companion wouldn't know that right away unless they had seen it before. "I mean, at a guess," he tried to cover up his gaff.

The part human Doctor rolled his eyes, pushed up his glasses, and pressed the end of the cylinder. The other end projected images onto the wall. Dozens of images flashed by quickly, images that Rose was sure all had an origination in England, if not London itself.

The man watched the info-stamp with wide eyes, then sat down in a chair quickly, with his hand over his face. Rose had watched him do it and knew that a previously suppressed memory was surfacing. From his reaction, it wasn't a good one. She went to go over to him and comfort him.

" _Don't,"_ she heard the part human speak in her mind.

" _Why not?"_ she queried.

" _A memory is returning, it may be the key to unlocking the rest of his memories and finding out what happened to him. If you disturb that, he might have a harder time remembering,"_ he informed her.

The Time Lord put on his glasses, that Rose knew he didn't need, but he only wore because they looked impressive. "See? Compressed information, tons of it," he lectured. "This looks to be the history of London, 1066 to the present day. This is like a disk, a sort of Cyberdisk. But why would the Cybermen need something that was so simple?" He continued talking his thoughts through without realizing that the other man was remembering. "They've gotta be wireless. Unless...oh, they're in the wrong century, they haven't got much power. They need plain old basic info-stamps to update themselves." He turned around and finally noticed what the others had noticed already. "Are you all right?" he asked the human man.

"I'm fine," he declared, in true Doctor fashion.

"No, you're not," Rose called him out on it, now that the Doctor in brown had said something to him. "What are you remembering?"

He looked up at her, then looked to the other two and sat up straighter. "I've seen one of these before," he told them. "I was...holding one of those the night I lost my mind. The night I regenerated." He swallowed. "The Cybermen, they made me change. My mind, my face, everything that I am. And you were there." He looked between the twin Doctors. "Who are you? To me?"

"We're friends," the Time Lord responded. "I swear."

"Then I beg of you, John, James, Rose. Help me."

"Ah, two words we can never refuse," the Doctor in blue said with a smile. He handed the cylinder to the 'next Doctor.' "This isn't a conversation that we should be having in a dead man's house, though. It'll make a bit more sense if we head back to your TARDIS." He made to leave the room.

"Hold on," his twin called. "I need to do a final check, won't take but a tick." He began opening doors and looking around in places they hadn't looked before. There's one more thing I can't figure out. You see, if this room has got info-stamps, then maybe, just maybe, it has something that needs info-stamping" He opened one more door. "Okay, then." He closed it quickly. "I think we should run."

A Cyberman pushed the door back open.

"Run Doctor, now! Rose, let's shift!" They ran out of the room. The part human Doctor pushed the human man out of the room, and the Time Lord grabbed Rose by the hand and pulled her along. Rose closed the door of the library behind her, hoping that it might slow the Cyberman just a bit.

They tried to run out the front door, but were blocked by a second Cyberman. Then they turned back, hoping to find another exit, but just then, the first Cyberman broke through the library door and they were trapped.

"The Doctor will be Deleted." One Cyberman claimed.

"Delete!" the other one warned.

"Okay, up the stairs! We can't lead them outside!" The Time Lord called. The one hearted Doctor rushed the man who thought that he was the Doctor up the stairs to get him out of immediate danger.

The Doctor with two hearts started looking around for anything that might be of any use. When he pulled an umbrella out of a stand and it absurdly popped up, Rose remembered her Christmas gift from the Doctors. She pulled her katana out of her inside pocket about the same time that the Doctor found the cutlass on the wall.

She unsheathed the sword and wished that she had been able to practice with it before this moment, as she was a bit rusty with it. She gave it a quick experimental swing to check it's weight and balance. She'd only have one chance to get this right.

"I'm a dab hand with a cutlass. You don't want to come near me when I've got one of these," the Doctor that was still downstairs with her boasted, as the Cybermen came closer to them. He flourished the sword in his hand. "This is your last warning." The Cybermen came even closer. "No? OK, this is really your last warning!"

Rose was a bit off to the side and grateful that the Cybermen were focused on getting to who they thought was the Doctor. She herself could run away at any time, except that would never do, especially not with the Doctors and a man who thought that he was the Doctor and had done a bang up job so far in trouble.

For the Cybermen from Pete's World, there was a spot on the back of the neck where it was possible to cut the circuitry with the sword. She knew this because she had done so before, in a moment of panic, when her weapon hadn't worked. One would turn up every now and then. Not all had come over here. People usually didn't get upset if one was clearly trying to kill you or someone else when you killed it.

The Cyberman closer to her held it's arm up, the weapon on it poised to hit one of the men above, and cried out "Delete!" Before it could get it's shot off, Rose, who had already been subconsciously and instinctively calculating force, angle, and trajectory for cutting the bundle of wiring at the back of it's neck, brought her sword down on it. There was a shower of sparks, and she jumped back and nearly dropped the long sword.

The Cyberman's arm dropped, and a moment later, it's whole body dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes.

The Time Lord was halfway up the stairs by now, fending off the Cyberman with his cutlass. "Listen to me properly! Whatever you're doing stuck in 1851, I can help! I'm the only person in the world who can help you! Listen to me!"

There was her Doctor, always trying to give their enemies a second chance, always trying to talk them down. She loved him for it, but there were two species she knew would never, ever took what he offered: Cybermen and Daleks.

She wanted to help, but where she was, at the bottom of the stairs, she couldn't do much. Her sword wouldn't reach the weak spot at it's neck. The angles she had to work with made it nearly impossible to help with what she had on hand. She looked around her for anything that might help, noticing the discarded and open umbrella on the floor, which was too flimsy to do anything with. A quick glance up at the landing showed the Doctor in blue searching his pockets and around him in the same manner as she was, and the other man was staring down at the info-stamp in his hand as if he was somewhere else.

The Doctor going up the stairs tried a new tactic. "I'm The Doctor. You need me. Check your memory banks, my name's The Doctor. Leave this man alone! The Doctor is me!" He then kicked the Cyberman that he had been blocking. It stumbled and Rose got out of the way, expecting it to fall, but it somehow stayed upright. It only moved a step down.

The Doctor ran up the rest of the stairs with his twin and the other man and noticed Rose still at the bottom of the stairs, a twitchy Cyberman at her feet and her sword out. He opened his mouth to say something to her, when the Cyberman that was still moving up the stairs got to the landing and he had to turn his attention back to it. He tried again to convince it that he was the Doctor and not the other man, but it was very determined to take out the poor human man.

Said human suddenly flipped open the end of the tube he had been holding and pointed it at the advancing metal man. A bright beam of light shot out of the end, and the Cyberman dropped to it's knees, held it's head, and then fell over on the floor.

"Oh, brilliant!" she yelled up the stairs. She sheathed her sword and made her way up the stairs, listening to the Doctors gush over the other man's brilliance and using technical words that the man wouldn't even begin to understand. They were gonna botch up the whole thing, she thought.

When she got to the landing, she asked him, "Can you do that to the twitchy one down there? It's still a bit dangerous." At that moment, as if to illustrate her point, the laser weapon on it's arm went off an burned a hole in the umbrella.

"Yes, of course," replied the shaken man, who then pointed his new weapon at the Cyberman on the lower floor. A moment later, it was finally, completely still.

He then turned on the Doctor in brown. "You told them that you were the Doctor. Why did you do that?" he queried.

"I was trying to protect you," he answered softly.

"You were trying to take away the only thing that I've got, like they did." The man looked so broken. "They stole something from me, something so precious, but I can't remember. What happened, what did they do to me?"

"We'll find out," the Doctor in blue promised.

They went past the dead Cyberman and down the stairs. When they went to go past the other, which was laying on it's side, Rose registered it for the first time, the one thing she had hoped to never see again.

These Cybermen had the Cybus Industries 'C' on their chests.

As the part human Doctor and the other man went out the front door, Rose stood frozen. She couldn't tear her eyes off of the logo on it's chest.

"No, no, no, no, no, it can't be," she whispered. The Doctor took her hand and she turned to meet his eyes. "How are _these_ Cybermen here in this time? I thought I'd never have to see them again."

"I have a theory," he told her, and pulled out a pair of 3D glasses and slipped them on. The sight made her want to tear them off his face and break them up into a million tiny little pieces. He sighed, took them back off, and handed them to her.

A quick look through them showed so much void stuff that you couldn't actually see the Cyberman when she wore the glasses. A bit of curiosity had her hold her hand in front of her face. She could barely see her own hand. She hoped they'd never have to open the void again.

XxXxXxXx

They stepped outside of the house and followed the "new Doctor" to wherever he thought he was going. On the way there, they listened to the man describe what he had remembered from the night he lost his mind. They other three were half paying attention to him as Rose told the Doctors about the accidentally found weak point on the Cybermen and the Doctors both told Rose about his other self's theory with the fob watch.

" _So, you can turn yourself completely human?"_ she asked gobsmacked.

" _Sort of,"_ the part human Doctor replied. _"The body is human, but so is the mind. You don't remember who you are, just whatever the Chameleon Arch puts into your head. But bits and pieces of the true person can leak through."_

" _And you did that!?"_ she mentally shrieked at them. _"Why?"_

" _Welll,"_ the part human sheepishly replied, _"I was trying to be kind."_ They then told her about the Family, but left out the part about what they had eventually done to them, and how hard it was to come back to being a Time Lord.

" _What if you had been alone?"_ she worried. _"What if you had been on your own? What would you have done then?"_

" _I don't know,"_ his counterpart replied honestly. _"Thankfully, I don't have to find out."_

Darkness had fallen, and they had turned into an alleyway.

Suddenly, Rosita was there. She ran over to the 'next Doctor' with an, "Oh, my god, Doctor, I thought you were dead!" and hugged him.

"Now, now, Rosita," he replied. "A little decorum."

She got a bit angry then. "You've been gone for far too long!" She turned and faced the other three people in the room. "He's always doing this, this leaving me behind, going frantic!"

"What about the TARDIS?" the man asked.

"She's ready, come on!"

"Oh, I am so looking forward to this," the part human murmured. The other two agreed.

If this wasn't the Doctor, then what was the TARDIS?

The five of them entered a building that looked like a stable. Inside, clothes and suitcases were scattered around. The three time travelers looked about the place with interest as the two pure humans talked with one another.

"...were right though, Rosita," he complimented her. "The Reverend Fairchild's death was the work of the Cybermen."

"Do you live here?" The part human asked them.

"'Tis only a temporary base, until the enemy is routed. The TARDIS is magnificent, but is hardly a home." He replied.

" _It's a great home to me,"_ he heard Rose in his mind. Even her dual layered mental voice sounded a bit pouty. He looked over to her as she watched this other man wash his face while his counterpart stood at the opening of the stall and asked about the TARDIS. He wanted to nip that bottom lip sticking out. She glanced over at him with a blush and he realized that his errant thought had projected. Even his other self glanced over quickly, with an amused eyebrow raise.

" _Like I said before, a bit of human DNA, and you can only-"_

" _Oh, shut it, Spaceman,"_ he snapped back.

"What's with all the luggage?" Rose asked the human man, getting them all back on track.

"It's luggage, the property of Jackson Lake, the first man to be murdered," he answered her query absentmindedly. He turned back to Rosita. "My new friends are fighters, Rosita, very much like myself." He pointed at the brown suited Doctor and said, "he faced the Cybermen with a cutlass." The finger turned to Rose. "She faced them with a sword, and managed to take one down with it." He then pointed to the Doctor in the blue suit, "And he kept me from making a mistake and being killed." He puffed himself out proudly. "I am not ashamed to admit it, they were so very much braver than I."

The Time Lord used his distraction to start sonicing things around the room. He focused his attention on the biggest pile of luggage.

"It was quite brilliant," the "next Doctor' gushed. "They made quite the team. He turned to the Doctor in the brown suit. Are you whistling again?"

He had gotten the two of them confused, which was a good thing, as he was on the other side of the room and couldn't cover for his counterpart the way he could cover for Rose before.

"Yes. Yes I am, yeah," the Time Lord hid the screwdriver behind his back and said, having caught on quickly to the mix up. He put the screwdriver back in his pocket and made a shushing motion to Rosita, who had seen him do it.

Rose went over to the pile of luggage and helped the Doctor shift it to get to the box where he had found something with the sonic.

"That's another man's property!" Rosita protested when they popped the clasps on the trunk

"Well, a dead man's," his other self said, a little too flippantly, maybe.

"'Sevidence," Rose explained incredulously. "'Ave you two not gone through it to find out if there was anythin' 'ere tha' might' explain why 'e was murdered?"

"It's not proper," Rosita weakly protested.

"Not proper! The man is dead, and what's in here could be the key to finding out why!"

The part human Doctor decided to step in and change the subject before Rose got into one of her famous arguments. "So, Rosita, how did you meet the Doctor?" he asked the woman.

"He saved my life." she told him simply. Wasn't that always the way? "Late one night, by the Osterman's Wharf, this...creature came out of the shadows. A man made of metal. I thought I was going to die." She looked over to the man she thought of as the Doctor, who was busy with something. He was certain that the man was listening in, though.

"And then there he was. The Doctor. He grabbed my hand and told me to run."

A glance over at Rose showed her to be intently looking through one of the cases, a smile on her face as she remembered their meeting, which could be described almost exactly the same way, just substitute metal for plastic.

"Can you help him, sir? He has such terrible dreams. Wakes every night in a state of terror."

"Come on now, Rosita," the other man cut in. "With all the things a Time Lord has seen, everything he's lost, he must surely have bad dreams."

And didn't that just cut right to the bone? He tried to keep a blank face and looked over to his counterpart, who had also lost everything he had up to the moment that he became two men. His counterpart had an intensely depressed look on his face that he tried to hide and he knew must surely be on his own too. He then looked over to Rose, who had put her hand on his counterpart's arm and was giving him a sad look. She knew about a lot of what they had lost, but not all of it, not yet. He also knew, even without the telepathy, that she had to be thinking of his loss at that moment. It was inevitable, and he found himself to be extremely glad that they hadn't made it to Pete's World after all. At least here, she'd have his other self and Jack when everyone else was gone.

"Oh look at that," the Time Lord said, trying to change the subject. "Jackson Lake had an info-stamp" He waved the shiny silver tube.

"How? Is it significant?"

"The answer to all of this is in your TARDIS, may we see it?" he asked the man.

"Oh, yes sir," the human man replied proudly. "It would be my honor."

XxXxXxXx

Rose walked out behind the others into the yard of the stable. In the middle of it, a mostly blue hot air balloon stood, inflated and ready to leave at a moment's notice.

"There she is!" The 'new Doctor' exclaimed. "My transport through Time and Space. The TARDIS.

"You've got a...balloon," the Doctor in blue slowly stated.

"TARDIS," the man corrected. "T-A-R-D-I-S. It stands for Tethered Aerial Release Developed In Style. Do you see?" He looked proud of his accomplishment, and he should, really. It was brilliant, a way to fly in this day and age. She wondered how long he thought about how to name it and keep it within the letters he knew.

Rose walked around it, checking it out from every angle. She came up close to it and looked inside the basket, then up at the works.

"Well, I do now," the one hearted Doctor stated as he inspected the balloon

"I love it, TARDIS, it's brilliant!" Rose exclaimed. She'd never seen a hot air balloon up close before.

"Nice one," the Doctor in brown congratulated him. "It's inflated by gas, yeah?"

"We're adjacent to the Mutton Street Gasworks, I pay them a modest fee." He turned to the young man that tended his balloon. "Good work, Jed." He clapped him on the back.

"Glad to be of service, sir," Jed replied. The other man, who Rose was sure of his real identity now, handed Jed some bills.

"You've got quite a bit of money," the Time Lord asked.

"Oh, you get nothing for nothing," the man replied. "How's the ripped panel, Jed?"

"All repaired, sir, should work a treat. You never know, tonight may be the night, Doctor. Imagine it, seeing Christmas from way up above!"

"Well not just yet, I think. One day, I will ascend. One day very soon," the 'Doctor' said with longing.

"Have you never actually been up there?" the blue suited Doctor asked.

"He dreams of leaving, but never does," Rosita answered with an eye-roll

"I can depart, in the TARDIS, once London is safe," he shot back, with the air of someone who had had that conversation several times.

He looked up at the balloon again with that longing that Rose knew too well. She imagined she had the same look in her eyes every time she had climbed up to the roof and watched the stars when she was stuck in Pete's World. "And when I'm finally up there..." he started. "Think of it ladies and gentlemen, the Time and the Space."

"The perfect escape," the dual hearted Doctor gave him a knowing look. "Do you ever wonder what you're escaping from?"

He looked over at the Doctor and replied, "oh, John, I do, with every moment."

" _He's Jackson Lake, isn't he?"_ Rose asked both of her Doctors.

" _I think so too,"_ one agreed.

" _Yeah, and I know how he came to know about us,"_ the other replied. At their questioning thoughts, he showed them an image of an info-stamp. The Time lord had been last in line as they went to see Jackson's TARDIS, and he took the opportunity to see what was on the info-stamp

"Then would you like me to tell you?" he asked Jackson. "'Cause I think I've worked it out now. How you became the Doctor. Would you like to know?"

"You've figured it out?" the poor man asked hopefully. "Oh, yes!" Jackson was excited.

XxXxXxXx

The Doctor led Jackson Lake back to the stable full of luggage. There, he gestured for Jackson and Rosita to sit down. He sat on the bale in front of them, his counterpart sat next to him, and Rose chose to stand behind them with her hands on their shoulders. They let him take the lead, as he was the one who figured out the final piece of the puzzle first. He decided to tell his tale as a, well, tale. It might be easier for the man.

"This story begins with the Cybermen," he started. "A long time away, and not far from here, The Cybermen were fought. They were beaten by sending them into a howling wilderness called the Void, to be locked inside forevermore." He felt Rose's grip on his shoulder tighten, and heard her breath catch. He reached up and put his hand over hers.

"But then a greater battle rose up, so great that everything inside the Void perished." her grip got tighter, and he wondered, not for the first time, and probably not the last, just what she had seen and been through between Canary Wharf and the Medusa Cascade. "But before that happened, as the walls of the universes weakened, the last of the Cybermen must have fallen through the dimensions and back through time. And they landed here, and found you."

"I fought them, I know that much, but what happened?"

"When the Cybermen came to London, so did another man," his other self picked up the story. "One, Mr. Jackson Lake. Plenty of luggage, money in his pocket. Maybe he was coming for the season, or maybe he had a acquired a job or something. Whatever the reason was, it doesn't matter, because he also found the Cybermen. And like you, he took hold of an info-stamp"

The man looked back and forth between the twins with wide eyes. "He's dead, though, Jackson Lake is dead. The Cybermen murdered him."

"But you yourself said that no body was found," Rose spoke up. "How would you know if he was dead? So many people go missing, but aren't really dead."

"You kept all of his suitcases, but never opened them," He told the man. "I told you that the answer was in the fob watch, may I see it?" The Doctor in the brown suit held out his hand so the other man could give him the watch. The other man handed it to him again, and the Doctor flipped it over, showing an engraving on the back. "I saw this before, but it didn't connect at the time," he told the man. He read off the initials on the back. "J. L. This watch belongs to Jackson Lake."

Rosita picked up on it immediately. She stared at the watch for a moment, then turned her attention to the man she had always known as the Doctor. "Sir, Jackson Lake is...you?"

"But, I'm the Doctor," Jackson said, still in denial.

"You became the Doctor because the info-stamp that you picked up was about one man," the Doctor in the brown suit said softly. He pulled the info-stamp that he had found out of one of his pockets and used it to project a stream of images on the wall, like had been done with the London stamp.

Pictures of all of his incarnations showed on the wall, and he watched Rose's face more than anything else, trying to gauge her reaction to them. She only knew the two faces and three bodies she had traveled with, and he wondered what she'd think of some of the other possibilities that he could become next.

He knew that there would be a lot of questions after this. They still didn't know if she could regenerate or not, and she was worried about it. But even if that wasn't on the table, she was inquisitive by nature, and would ask a lot of questions anyway.

To his delight, she looked at each one of his faces with awe. When it got to his big ears and daft face self, she had a look of sorrow, then it went to the picture of his current incarnation and she had a smile. He knew that she still sometimes missed his daft face, and he also knew that she had appropriated his leather jacket and it was hanging in her wardrobe. He had a suspicion that his current trench coat would disappear to there as well when its time was up. Or maybe the suit jacket.

"This is the Cybermen's database," his twin continued while the slide-show of faces was still going on "Probably stolen from the Daleks while inside the void, but it's everything you could ever want to know about the Doctor."

When the pictures had gotten to the last face, his current incarnation, Jackson looked stunned. "That's you!"

"Time Lord, TARDIS, enemy of the Cybermen," the brown suited Doctor then clicked his tongue. "Yep! The info-stamp must have backfired and streamed all that information right inside your head."

Jackson looked between both Doctors with his eyebrows scrunched. "B-But you can't be, you're twins."

"Not quite," the Doctor in blue cut in. "It's complicated and deals with regeneration energy, but I'm literally him." he pointed to his double. "There's two of me now for a while. This me is part human."

Jackson continued staring at the Doctors in an effort to figure it out. He then looked to Rose, who nodded.

"It's all true, Mr. Lake," she confirmed for him.

He sat back in despair. "Am I nothing more than a lie?" he questioned of them.

All three time travelers said, "No!" together.

"Info-stamps are just facts and figures. That didn't make you who you are," the Time Lord assured him.

"Rescuing people like Rosita, defending London? That took real bravery," Rose added.

"The invention, your TARDIS. That was all you!" The blue suited Doctor enthused.

"What else?" The poor man asked. He looked up at the three Time travelers and his face took on hints of anger. "I demand you to tell me, sir. Tell me what they took!"

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," Rose said as soon as he finished. She walked over to Jackson and put her hand on his shoulder. "Tha's an awful lotta luggage for one person."

Jackson looked over to the pile of luggage in realization.

"An info-stamp is just basic technology," the part human Doctor informed him sadly. "It's not enough to make a man lose his mind."

"What happened to you is called a fugue state. It's where the mind just runs away, because it can't bear to look back." The Doctor with two hearts took a deep breath that was almost a sigh and continued. "You wanted, needed to become someone else, because Jackson Lake had lost so much."

They gave the man a moment to process this. As he did, they all heard a bell toll twelve times in the distance.

"Midnight. It's Christmas Day," Rosita announced.

Suddenly, Jackson sat up. "I remember...Oh, my God!" He slumped forward with his head in his hands. "They killed my wife! Oh my God, Caroline, they killed her!" He cried, and both Rose and Rosita rushed to comfort him.

Suddenly, the info-stamp in his pocket started beeping. And a loud beeping came from one of the trunks. Both of the Doctors rushed over to it and opened it. Inside, there was a whole belt of info-stamps.

"Oh, would you look at that..." the part human said in wonder.

"Looks like you actually found a whole cache of info-stamps," the Gallifreyan man told Jackson Lake.

"What is it?" Rosita asked.

"Doctor, what's that noise?" Rose questioned.

"It's activation, a call to arms. The Cybermen are moving!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I know not much has changed up to this point, but I consider most of "The Next Doctor" to be the story of Jackson Lake finding himself again. I've tried to change as much as I could without changing the basic story. From here, though, the changes start getting bigger.


	4. Children

"Doctor, what's that noise?" Rose questioned.

"It's activation, a call to arms. The Cybermen are moving!" He rushed out of the stable to see what was going on, Rose on his heels.

Outside, they ran through the side streets to the main streets in an attempt to find out more about what was going on. As they turned their third corner, Rose realized that the part human Doctor wasn't with them.

" _Where are you?"_ she asked him.

" _Still at the stable, I've got an idea,"_ he told her. _"What's going on out there?"_

" _We still don't know yet, haven't seen anything,"_ she sent back.

" _Be careful,"_ he pleaded.

" _You too."_

As the Doctor and Rose followed the two Cybermen, they noticed something really odd. There was a procession of young children, orphans, by the look of them, on the move slowly down the road.

XxXx

Rosita stayed behind to comfort her friend and savior, who had turned out to not be a Time Lord, but just an ordinary man who had suffered a tragic loss. He was crying like a baby, but she couldn't blame him, he had just found out that his wife was dead. She knew something horrible had to have happened to him, from his nightmares that he could never remember when he woke up.

The man in the blue suit, he said he was the Doctor, but he had introduced himself before as James, so she'd think of him that way, had stuffed a couple of the info-stamps into his pockets and used a couple of pieces of belt to make wrist holders for two of them. He had figured out a way to pop them open with one hand. He had asked for her help with the straps and she immediately came over to help him. Whatever he was about to do, it was important.

While she fastened the strap, James seemed to be listening to something that she couldn't hear. Come to think of it, his twin that wasn't quite a twin, the woman with them with the name that was similar to hers, and himself had all occasionally done that the entire time she had known them. They'd share a look or a smile or even body language that one usually had during a discussion, but would say nothing. Could they talk to each other in their minds? She knew they weren't quite human, the man in front of her had even said that he was part human. She had seen demonstrations of mental abilities in town, but they had all been tricks.

"Rosita, do you know anything about the children?" he suddenly asked her quickly. "Oh, better explain. There's a procession of them out there right now. Probably orphans, judging from the looks of them and the fact that there are dozens of them out after midnight without any parents." If he knew something going on elsewhere, what other abilities did they have?

"The children from the workhouses. There's no reason for them to be out this late at night," she told him. "I used to live in one."

"Rosita, I'm sorry to hear that," James said sincerely. "Right now, you can help. Go to my twin and see what's going on, he needs any information you may have. The Cybermen are taking the children somewhere." He told her where his other self and Rose were.

Rosita ran to the place where James had told her that Rose and John, or the Doctor, she'd stick with John for now, were.

They walked along the road away from the children, in an attempt to keep an eye on them and blend in with the various people who were just going about their usual business that night.

"What is it? What's happening?" she breathlessly asked the pair when she met them. She took in the children, walking together as if they had been ordered to do so, then noticed Mr Cole. Okay, maybe it wasn't as bad as they had thought. If he was walking them somewhere, the Cybermen weren't taking them.

"That's Mr Cole," she informed them. "He's master of the Hazel Street Workhouse. Maybe he's taking them to prayers? It is Christmas."

"Nothing quite as holy as that," John replied.

Rose went up to Mr. Cole and looked closely at his ear. Rosita thought it was a bit rude to just walk up to someone like that, but she had to admit to curiosity as to what the thing in his ear was. It flashed with a blue light and beeped softly. She had never seen anything like that before.

"Hello Mr. Cole?" Rose asked, "Hello? Can you hear me?" She turned to John. "I didn't think so, bleedin' earpods 'r' controllin' 'im."

John reached into his inside jacket pocket for something, but after a quick look around, he stopped and pulled his hand out of his pocket. "No, can't risk a fight," he muttered to himself. "Not with the children around."

"Where are they going?" Rosita asked them.

Both of them looked around, looking a little lost for the moment until Jed came up to them.

"All need a good whipping, if you ask me. There's tons of 'em. I've just seen another lot coming from the Ingleby Workhouse down Broadback Lane," he commented.

Rose turned to him. "Why'd you say tha'?" she barked at him. She dropped a lot of strong sounds from her words when she was angry, and Rosita guessed that she had a very low status at birth. "Why woul' you say tha'? Do they LOOK like they wanna be 'erded like sheep afta mi'nigh' on Chris'mas Day?"

John just asked Rosita, "Where's that?"

"The workhouse? It's this way."

She led John and Rose through side streets until they came to another group of children being led by Mr. Milligan in the same general direction as the other group they had seen were headed to.

The whole way, she heard Rose muttering in a very low voice. She caught a few words and phrases. "Jus' kids." "Whip 'em for followin' orders?" "Kids probably thin' they're gonna ge' presen's." Was Rose like her? An orphan who had been in one of the workhouses? She seemed awfully passionate about the kids that most people just ignored.

"There's dozens of 'em!" she exclaimed when she saw how many kids there were.

"But what for?" John asked, clearly not expecting anyone to answer. He seemed like a man to talk a problem out.

"Only one way to find out," Rose replied grimly.

They followed the children.

XxXx

Jackson only cried for a moment after Rosita left. He suddenly had an idea of how he could find out what else had been taken from him. He just needed to know where. He rummaged through his suitcases, looking for it. "Where is it?" he asked himself.

"Where is what?" James, er, the Doctor, asked. The man was just about to leave when Jackson had his epiphany.

"Aha!" he cried out, waving a piece of paper at the other man. He then folded it up and stuck it in his pocket. The other man's question reminded him that there was something more important than his past at that moment, and he could figure that out later, before more people lost their loved ones.

He picked up the belt of info-stamps that were left behind, strapped it on himself like a bandolier, and pulled one out.

"Need a spare hand?" he asked the man in the blue suit.

He grinned and winked. "Could always use a spare hand. Love spare hands. I used to be a spare hand. Allonsy!"

With that odd comment, the Doctor darted out the door and Jackson followed him.

Almost immediately, they ran into a Cyberman, which was quickly dispatched by a flick of the Doctor's wrist. The two man went through London, keeping mostly to alleyways and side streets, almost to the Thames, dispatching random Cybermen and CyberBeasts, or whatever they were called.

"Who are you all, really?" he asked James, out of curiosity.

"Your friendly neighborhood Spider Man," he joked.

"What does a man-spider have to do with this?" Jackson asked, confused.

"Oh, um, right, that's way in the future. It's just a story," he replied. "We'll, I'm a Time Lord, well, this me is really more Gallifreyan/human hybrid, the other me is an actual, proper Time Lord. Well I say proper, but I've never been 'proper' according to-" He stopped gabbling for a moment and cleared his throat, a sad look on his face. "Anyway, we're from another planet, but have sort of adopted Earth as a second home." The way he said all of that made Jackson think that there was a really big, sad story there. "As for Rose, well, Rose is Rose, She's actually from London, this London. She'll be born in, oh, 136 years? I met her the same way you met Rosita, saved her life."

Another beast showed up, and that was the end of their conversation.

XxXx

Rose, the Doctor with two hearts, and Rosita followed the kids until they went through some doors.

"That's the door to the sluice. All the sewage runs through there, straight into the Thames," Rosita informed the time travelers.

"Ah, sewage, ya take me to the nicest places," Rose joked in an effort to break the tension.

"When we leave here, I'll take you to a ball in a palace that's entirely crystal if you want," he told her. "This is too well guarded. We'll have to find another way in."

They turned around to find another way, but there were two Cybermen blocking their path. They jumped when they saw them and Rose wondered how they managed to get there without them noticing.

"Whoa! That's cheating, sneaking up! Did you have your legs on silent?" he asked them indignantly.

A woman in a red gown that Rose would have dubbed Fuck Me Red if it were a shade of lipstick walked up and stood right in front of the Cybermen.

"So, what do we have here?" she asked. The woman seemed to be unaware of the danger she was in.

"Just walk toward me, slowly," the Doctor ordered her, his hand held out to the woman in an attempt to get her to come. "Don't let them touch you."

"Oh, but they wouldn't hurt me, my fine boys. They are my knights in shining armour. Quite literally," she said smugly. She was working with them.

"Ya, know, I've never understood why someone would want a 'knight in shinin' armour.'" Rose seethed, her teeth clenched. "Jus' means they've stayed outta trouble, maybe even ran from it. Gimme a man who's proven 'imself capable of 'andlin' 'imself anyday."

"Why, so he can protect you, little girl?" She sneered.

"Who said I need protectin'?" she shot back.

She felt a bit of amusement from the Doctor, but only a tiny bit before he turned his whole focus back to the woman in front of him.

"Even if they've converted you, that's not a Cyber speech pattern. You've still got free will. Step away," he beseeched her.

Rose hoped that they could get this woman to understand just how much danger she was in. But it was her experience that the people who worked against their own kind rarely got out before they themselves were destroyed. There were three types of people who worked for the invaders, the ones in it for power, the ones who were afraid, and the ones who fought from the inside. This woman seemed to be of the power hungry variety, though fighters from the inside often disguised themselves as such.

"There's been no conversion, sir. No one's ever been able to change my mind. The Cybermen offered me the one thing I wanted. Liberation."

"Who are you?" Rosita asked the woman in red.

"You both can be quiet. I doubt he paid either of you to talk," the woman dismissed Rosita and Rose in the same breath as she called them whores. Rose growled at her, but said nothing, not yet. "More importantly, who are you, sir, With such intimate knowledge of my companions?"

"I'm the Doctor," he announced with a bit of anger.

"Incorrect. You do not correspond to our image of the Doctor," one of the Cybermen cut in.

"Yeah," the Doctor replied. "That's 'cause your database got corrupted. Look! Check this!" He pulled out the info-stamp that he had been carrying. "The Doctor's info-stamp." He tossed the metal cylinder to the Cyberman who had spoken and the metal man caught it deftly, which surprised Rose, as the Cybermen had always seemed somewhat clumsy.

"Plug it in." he told the Cyberman. "Go on, download," he goaded.

"The Cyberman popped open the end of the info stamp and looked down into it. "The core has been damaged. This info stamp would damage Cyberunits." it declared.

Rose could feel the his disappointment that the plan to have one of the Cybermen take out itself failed.

" _Well, so much for that,"_ she thought. The Doctor glanced over to her and she knew that the stray thought had gotten through.

"Oh well, nice try," he said, a bit embarrassed.

The info-stamp beeped a second later, and the Cyberman that held it proclaimed that the core was repaired. The 'C' logo on the front opened up, and it pushed the info-stamp inside.

"You are the Doctor," it declared a moment later, then took out the metal tube.

"Yep, that's me! Hello!" he replied back jovially, giving his little hand wave with wiggling fingers that Rose loved.

The silver man then turned towards Rose. "You are the Abomination."

"Oi!" Rose cried out offended. "Not you too?" she whined. "Look at yourself an' tell me which o' us is the abomination! You're a brain, encased inna robot!"

"The Doctor and the Bad Wolf will be deleted." The Cyberman ordered, and both it and it's companion lifted their arms in preparation to kill them.

"H-h-hold on!" the Doctor stuttered. "Just a tick!" he tried to buy them any amount of time he could to get them out of there. The only other way out was through the doors the children had just gone through, and that wasn't an option yet.

"One last request?" Rose queried quickly, in the hope that it would buy more time, maybe get information out of them while they were at it. At the same time, she made sure that her links with both Doctors were fully opened, so that none of them would miss out on each others plans and could react faster.

"Yes, last request, before we die, let us die happy, huh?" the Doctor caught on to Rose's train of thought immediately, because he had just had the same exact idea himself. "Tell us, what are you taking the children for, What d'you need them for?"

"What are children ever needed for? They're a workforce," the woman said, as if it was obvious.

"Workforce!" Rose screeched, unaware of how just like her mother she sounded right then. "They're jus' kids! An' ya pull 'em outta bed. Afta mi'night! On Chris'mas Day! Ta work like slaves!"

"They are mine to do as I please, until they are old enough to fend for themselves and can get work on their own," the woman said smugly.

"But what do you need them _for_?" The Doctor asked.

"Very soon now, the entire Empire will see what for, and they will bow down in worship." The woman talked as if this were a religious event. Did she not know that the remaining people would no longer be human in any respect once this was over?

"And it's all been timed for Christmas Day. Was that your idea, Miss...?" he asked the woman in the lurid red dress her name.

"Hartigan," she replied. "And yes, it's the perfect day for a birth, with a new message for the people. Only this time, it won't be the words of a man."

"The birth of what?" the Doctor interrogated in the attempt to keep her talking and the Cybermen from deleting them as long as he could.

"A birth and a death, Namely, yours. Thank you Doctor. I'm glad to have been part of your very last conversation." She was smug, so confident in her position. "Now-"

"What happened to you?" Rose interrupted what was obviously going to be the order to kill them. "What happened to make you like this? I mean it's obvious that you, or someone close to you suffered at the hands of a man, or several men, but you're being derogatory to women as well." Anything, anything at all to keep her talking for a few more moments, and they'd be out of there. If they had the info-stamp, they'd have been out of there already, but Rose hadn't thought to bring one, and the Doctor gave them the his in his first idea.

"You wouldn't understand, girl," she sneered.

Rose saw a flash of blue behind the woman. "Oh, you'd be surprised at what I understand that _you_ wouldn't," she informed the woman, sincerely.

"I've had enough of this child's prattle, Delete them."

The Cybermen both raised their weapons up to the Doctor and Rose. The Doctor tried to stand in her way, but suddenly, a bright, electric light lit up the space they were in. Both Cybermen grabbed their heads and dropped to the ground.

When the light disappeared, they saw the Doctor in the blue suit and Jackson Lake. The Doctor had a leather strap on each of his wrists, an info-stamp strapped into each one. Jackson had the belt that the brown-suited Doctor found earlier strapped to his torso and an info-stamp in his hand.

"At your service, Doctor," Jackson greeted.

"Savin' your arse again," the other man joked.

Miss Hartigan suddenly yelled. "Shades! Shades!"

"Okay, time to run!" The Time Lord called out to everyone.

"Shades!

"So that's what they're called!" Rose exclaimed. As one of the woolly CyberShades came at Miss Hartigan's call.

"One last thing!" Rosita called out, then rushed over to the red dressed woman and punched her in the face.

"Can I say, I completely disapprove!" The part human chided Rosita as he pulled her away.

The Time Lord took Rose's hand and yanked her along as Rose called out, "oh, Rosita, I _like_ you!"

XxXx

They ran a good way before they had to stop for a breather. Rosita looked like she was about to hyperventilate, Jackson wasn't faring much better, The part human Doctor and Rose were breathing pretty hard, but okay, as they were pretty used to running by now.

"You strapped those on like Spiderman?" Rose asked the blue suited Doctor incredulously.

"Why not? Can't drop them this way, and they're a little harder to take from me."

Rose just leaned her head back against the wall that the rest of her body leaned on and giggled. "If you say so, Peter Parker."

"I thought your name was James, or the Doctor?" Rosita gasped out.

"No, no, it's a joke," Rose explained. "There's a...fairy tale where I'm from. A man, Peter Parker, is bit by a spider and turns into a superhero called Spiderman."

"Oh, that explains it," Jackson gasped out. "Oh, I'm way too old for this."

"That stronghold down by the river." the Time Lord turned their attention back to the problem at hand after a few seconds. "We need to find a way inside."

"I'm ahead of you!" Jackson said. He took a deep breath, straightened up, and reached into his pocket. "My Wife and I were moving to London so I could take up a post at the university." He pulled a folded piece of paper out of his pocket. "My memory still is not intact, but this was in my luggage. The deeds to 15 Latimer Street. My new home. And if I discovered the Cybermen there, in the cellar, then..."

"That might be a way in! Brilliant!" the Doctor in brown exclaimed.

"There's still more, though," Jackson told him. "Still something missing. I remember the cellar, and my wife. But I swear there was something else in that room." He shook his head in memory. "If we can find that, perhaps that's the key to defeating these invaders!" He then took off, and Rosita followed close by. The Doctors and Rose took off after them.

When they caught up to the pair, the Doctor in blue looked at Rosita and told her, "Maybe you should go back, we're headed in-"

"Don't even try!" she hissed.

"No, no, of course not," the Doctor sheepishly said as he scratched the back of his neck. _"Someone's been a bad influence,"_ he thought with amusement.

" _Or maybe someone's tired of people telling her to run away from danger,"_ Rose thought back. Right, the links were still wide open.

"So, what's with the kids?" Rose asked aloud. "Why does no one seem surprised about them being used as a workforce? They're just kids!"

"They're from the workhouses," Rosita said, as if that explained it all.

"So?"

"The workhouses are harsh, they're meant to be, to deter able bodied poor and ensure that only the truly destitute would apply," the Doctor in brown started his lecture. "In areas such as medical care and education for children, though, they're privileged. Neither of those were available to the poor of England of this time, except to those who lived in the workhouses."

The Doctor in blue took up the rest of the lecture. "In some ways, those kids are advantaged over the general population and it'll stay that way until the early 20th century. These kids have opportunities to pull themselves out of poverty that most kids of the time don't have."

With that, they found the house that Jackson Lake and his wife purchased.

XxXxXxXx

When they entered the cellar, Rose saw a Cyberman. Before it could attack any of them, Jackson, who was in the lead, shot it down with one of the info-stamps still strung across his chest. Before they had all entered the house, they had agreed to each have at least one info-stamp on them just in case.

The Doctor in brown, who had been right behind Jackson, ran to the center of the cellar when they got to the room. In the center of the cellar, a device stood. Rose had never seen anything like it before, and she didn't know what it did, but she knew at a glance who built it.

"Now that's definitely Dalek technology," she commented when the Doctor touched it.

"It must have been guarding this. A Dimension Vault!" the Doctor in brown exclaimed. He looked it over.

"As Rose said, it's Dalek in origin. The Cybermen must have stolen it from them again." the part human Doctor gestured to the device. "This would be how they traveled through time, and got out of the Void. Is this the thing you couldn't remember, Jackson?"

"I don't think so, I can't remember. It's like it's hidden from me," Jackson replied.

"There's not enough power," The Time Lord muttered. He then stood up. "Come on! Avanti!" he yelled impatiently as he ran to the tunnel. The others followed behind him.

"What do they want, though?" Rosita asked.

"Us," Rose and the part human Doctor replied at the same time.

"That is what the Cybermen are," Rose explained. "They're human beings, or were, until their brains were put into metal casings. They want every other human to be like them. This lot were created in another universe. When they lost there, almost all of them found their way to this universe, where they were defeated again and that's when they were sent to the Void."

They finally saw the room where the children were being worked.

"Upon my soul!" Jackson whispered.

"It's like one of those slave movies," Rose said, horrified at what she saw. Several children were turning a wheel in the middle of the room, others were carrying buckets of water and coal. Some were shoveling coal. All were breathing in the coal dust and hot steam, sweat cleared rivulets of the dust off of their faces. Cybermen watched over them.

"What is it?" Rosita asked.

"It's an engine, they're generating electricity. But what for?" one of the Doctors wondered behind her.

"We can set them free!" Jackson exclaimed as he made his way to do just that.

"No, no, no, no," the Doctor in blue stopped him. "Not yet." He turned away from the view and pulled Jackson along with him. Everyone else followed.

The next room the five of them came to was out of the way. There was a small readout that the Doctor in brown went straight to. He pulled out his glasses again and slipped them on.

"Power at 90% ! But if we stop the engine, the power dies down, the Cybermen will come running!" He ran his hands through his hair, trying to figure out a way to break the impasse.

The Doctor in blue watched the readout as if it were going to give him answers while his twin paced.

Rose turned around in a slow circle. Something about this room was familiar. She studied as much as she could of things that the Cybermen had built when she was in the alternate universe. This setup was familiar, but she couldn't place it.

Suddenly, the Doctor who was watching the readout tapped it. "Hold on, there's a power fluctuation." He looked closer at it. "Well, that's not meant to happen."

"Is it going wrong?" Jackson asked.

"No. That's weird, the software's changing itself," he replied.

"It's being rewritten!" the one in brown pinstripes added.

Suddenly, there was a power surge.

"What the hell!" both Doctors exclaimed and jumped back at the same time.

"It's accelerating. 96 percent, 97..."

"When it reaches 100, what about the children?" Rosita questioned them, fearfully.

"They're disposable," the brown suited Doctor replied.

"They'll be deleted," the Doctor in blue said.

"How did they build this in this time?" Rose wondered out loud, still trying to figure out what exactly it was, and why it seemed so familiar.

"Come on! The Doctor in brown shouted from around the corner. She felt a twinge of his annoyance at being held up, and sent him back her own annoyance at his interruption.


	5. The CyberKing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a trigger warning here, brief mentions of thoughts of suicide.

The Cybermen cried out, "delete!" just as the Doctor in the black trench coat, Jackson, and Rosita ran in. The three used info-stamps to stop the Cybermen.

As they used them, the Doctor in brown ran in. He held his sonic in one hand and an info-stamp in the other. He stopped one last Cyberman that the other three hadn't seen in time as it raised it's laser weapon at his brother.

"Right. Now!" He called out to the children. "All of you, out! D'you hear me? That's an order!" Some of the children ran, a lot of them stayed where they were, either frozen in fear or shock.

"That means every single one o' ya, scram!" the part human Doctor yelled. The children finally started moving, but not fast enough for the adults.

"All of you, come on," Jackson waved the kids towards the exit. "As fast as you can, now. Come on!"

The Time Lord climbed up a piece of machinery where he would have some more height and hollered, "There's a hot pie for everyone, if you leg it!"

There were a lot of kids, more than even they had expected.

"Rosita, get them out of that sluice gate!" He called to the woman

"Once you're out, keep running, get them as far away from this place as possible," the Doctor in blue told her, a bit quieter, since he was right next to her.

"Turn right at the corner" she ordered the kids as she ran out of the room. They heard her shouting more directions but couldn't make out what she said.

That was when it hit him that Rose wasn't there. He turned to his full Time Lord counterpart. _"I thought she was right behind you?"_

" _She was!"_

" _Not here now."_

" _I see that!"_

" _Rose!"_ they both called out.

Neither of them noticed Jackson.

XxXxXxXx

Rose's annoyance only lasted a second before she turned her mind back to the task at hand. A couple of children, both girls about the age of eight, had come out as the Doctor had hollered for her to come on, and she was determined to make sure they got out.

"Come on, you two, time to get you out of here!" she called to the girls, both of whom followed her meekly.

The entire place still niggled at her memory, but she pushed that aside for the moment as she led the girls out into the hallway. She saw a bunch of kids run out into the hallway, a moment later, Rosita ran out after them, shouting orders. The boys must have everything in hand, then.

"Girls, listen to me carefully. Follow those kids and the woman, her name's Rosita. They'll lead you out of this place and somewhere you will be safe. Okay?"

The little girls nodded. Neither of them said a word as they ran to join the rest of the throng. One of the girls, however, a little blonde with curls, hugged her quickly before she took off. Cute little blighter.

She turned back toward the area where the little girls had come from. As she stepped toward it, a Cyberman came out, possibly after the little girls who had gotten away. She tried to duck behind some machinery, but the metal man saw her before she could hide.

"You are unauthorized, you will be taken to the Court of the CyberKing for upgrade."

Okay, she expected it to try to kill her, but this would work too, maybe she could get some more information before escaping.

Wait. Court of the CyberKing?

CyberKing?

No, it can't be!

Before the Cyberman could reach her to escort her, she pulled out her info-stamp and took out the Cyberman. As soon as it was down, she ran to the room where she had seen the kids coming from. A couple of stragglers were still on the move, which made it easy to find where the Doctors were.

Just before she entered the room, she felt their worry ratchet up through the links between them. As she turned the corner and saw her Doctors, they both called for her.

" _Rose!"_ came the doubled mental shout of the Doctors. They both practically screamed in her mind, as if by shouting it, they'd be more likely to get to her. The shock of it sent her info-stamp to the floor.

"Blimey," she complained out loud. They both turned around and faced her, relief evident both through the link and written on their faces. "Give a girl a headache, why don'tcha?"

She looked around the room properly, only a couple kids were left, all of whom had been very high up in the workroom when the group came to free them. She was about to tell the Doctors what she had learned when she noticed a small boy standing up near the ceiling on a platform. He had curly hair and some serious freckles.

"My son!" Jackson shouted at the same time she noticed the boy. "Doctor, that's my son!"

"What?" both men said at the same time. Jackson pointed up to the platform where the little boy stood.

"They took my son! No wonder my mind escaped!" Jackson ran his hands through his hair, not in frustration, but joy at having found his son. "Those damned Cybermen, they took my child. But he's alive, Doctor! Oh, my. Frederick!" he yelled up to the boy.

"Come on!" the Doctor in brown yelled up to the boy.

At the same time, the other Doctor hollered, "it's okay, you're safe now!"

"He's too scared," Jackson observed, frantic. "Stay there! Don't move. I'm coming!" he ordered his son. He made his way to the stairs where he could get up to the boy, but as soon as he stepped on the bottom stair, something exploded, and the way up the stairs became blocked.

The Doctor in the blue suit helped Jackson to his feet and checked him over as the other two time travelers looked for another way to save Frederick.

"I can't get up there! Fred!" Jackson was nearly hysterical.

"They're finished with the motor now," the Doctor in blue announced "It's gonna blow!"

"What are we going to do, Doctor? What are we going to do?"

Rose noticed a rope and weight. If she could just...yes! She pulled out her katana and strode forward to grab a rope at the same time the Time Lord pulled out the cutlass he got from Reverend Fairchild's.

"Come on Jackson, you know me!" the Doctor in brown exclaimed.

The two of them reached the same rope at the same time. When their hands touched one another, they had a brief argument about which one would go up.

" _Great minds,"_ she said.

" _I've got this, Rose,"_ he told her.

She sent him an image of herself swinging from a chain just after she met him, saving him.

He sent back feelings of wanting her safe, and she sent back agreement that she wanted him safe as well.

If either of them hadn't been telepathic, it would have taken a lot longer to do it. If they weren't touching, it would have taken a few seconds. As it was, it only took about a second total.

She then had an idea. This was a CyberKing, if they kept to the plans she had seen before as much as they could, there would be an emergency manual shutoff. There was always some type of manual shutoff in human built technology, and Cybermen used to be human. If she could get it turned off before it rose, things would be easier later.

With the knowledge that he could process it as fast as she could sent it, and still keep his mind on the task, she sent her sudden, half formed idea to him through their touch, along with the relevant information that she knew, then kissed him quickly, sliced the rope with her sword, and watched him rise for just a second before she took off on her mission.

" _Be careful, Rose,"_ she heard as she left the room, the part human Doctor on her heels.

XxXxXxXx

The Doctor watched his counterpart and Rose walk up to the same rope at the same time. Each held some kind of sword. They both had the same idea at exactly the same time. Through their wide open links, he could catch bits of their very quick argument followed by bits of the plan Rose had come up with. He was impressed with it, but it was dangerous.

Suddenly, she kissed him hard and quick, stepped back, and cut the rope with a graceful swing. A second later, she took off, and he automatically followed her out of the room.

When they got into the tunnels, Rose suddenly turned on him with fire in her eyes.

"What are you doing?" she hissed.

"Oi!" he replied indignantly. "You have a plan, a good plan, but I'm not letting you go up there alone to get hurt!"

She walked over to him and put her hand on the side of his face. "Doctor, my Doctor. Look at us. 'M worried about what might 'appen to you, just a touch, and..." she trailed off with a shudder.

"And what would happen to you?! We still don't know!" he shouted. He was angry at her attempt to protect him-again. She'd been trying that a lot lately, especially since they made their bond stronger. The role reversal was...unsettling. This ridiculously weak humanish body drove him a little mad.

She turned and walked back the way she was headed before. "It's a CyberKing. Did they 'ave CyberKings in this universe?"

"Yes," he answered. He knew what she did. She changed the subject. He'd go along with it, for now, but only because they had something to do.

There was the sound of an explosion in the distance, and everything shook. The Doctor and Rose were thrown together. Pain blossomed in his shoulder when he landed against her, and he heard a grunt.

"What do you know of 'em?" she asked when she got back upright.

"It's a ship, shaped like a big Cyberman. Dreadnought class. Front line of an invasion. Inside the chest there's a Cyberfactory."

"Amazin', isn't it? How the same concep's come back over and over again, across universes, time, places, and planets that never 'ad contact. It's like, there's certain universal, no, multiversal concep's that all sentient beings have at one time or another."

He had to smile at that, there was his Rose. "Yeah," he agreed, "I've often thought the same thing. Unfortunately, it also extends to things like these."

They came across a Cyberman, and the Doctor used an info-stamp on it.

"Crap, where is it?" Rose asked herself as she searched her pockets.

"Where's what?"

Rose shut her eyes tightly and smacked herself in the forehead. "Of course I dropped it!" She opened her eyes and looked at him. "I dropped the damned info-stamp back in the workroom. 'Ow I managed to jus' now notice, I'll never know."

The Doctor reached into his pocket and handed her the spare he carried. "Next time, strap them on like me!" He flashed her his cheeky grin while he showed off his strapped on info-stamps, and she rolled her eyes.

"Sure thing, Spiderman."

Since they had been thrown together, the whole place shook, and they had a tough time staying upright.

"Behold! I am risen! Witness me, mankind, as CyberKing of all!" They heard Ms Hartigan's voice, amplified, but it sounded wrong, like it was a computer speaking.

The pair had finally come to the shutdown switch, which was, thankfully, right where Rose expected it to be. Rose pulled the large switch right after Hartigan made her introduction. Suddenly, steam pipes all over the place burst, and it was almost impossible for two fleshy people to get through.

XxXxXxXx

The Doctor had rescued little Frederick Lake from the CyberKing and brought his to his father. He turned back to go after Rose, but before he could get down the corridor she had went through, another explosion blocked his path, and he was knocked over from the force.

If it were just a wall of flame, he'd have went through it in a heartsbeat, but the path was blocked by metal beams. He could have probably moved them, but then he'd have to stand in the flames. There was no other way to get to Rose and his other self.

An idea cropped up in his mind, and he took off after Jackson and his son. Another explosion rocked the remains of the workroom as he ran out of it and down the tunnel. When he reached the Lake's basement, he saw Jackson there, waiting on him, his son in his arms.

"What are you doing, Jackson, get out of here!" He yelled as he pulled the rod out of the center of the dimension vault.

"I was making sure you got out sir!" Jackson replied.

"Get the kid as far away from here as possible!"

The two of them ran toward the stable that Jackson had been staying in.

Suddenly, they heard Ms Hartigan's voice, amplified to levels not possible in this time. Human's weren't even capable of that much amplification in Rose's time. "Behold! I am risen! Witness me, mankind, as CyberKing of all!"

His hearts dropped. It still wasn't a Cyber speech pattern, so she still had free will, but from the sound of her voice, there had been some conversion of the woman. They watched a giant, steam engine Cyberman step out of the Thames as if it were nothing more than a puddle.

"What is that?" Jackson asked in wonder and fear.

"CyberKing. It's a ship. Dreadnought class. Front line of an invasion. And inside the chest there's a Cyber factory, ready to convert millions. Take him South, go to the Parkland," he told Jackson.

"But where are you going?" he asked.

"To stop that thing." The Doctor replied. He turned to run off, but Jackson's voice stopped him.

"I should be with you!" Jackson protested, worried for the Doctor.

"Jackson, you've got your son. You've got a reason to live," he reminded the man holding the boy in his arms.

"And you haven't?" He asked. "What about Rose and your brother?"

"I know they're okay for now," he told the man with a tap to his temple, indicating that he could feel them. "Rose and he can take care of themselves. Mind you, there's a reason I call her Jeopardy Friendly." He shook himself of the thought. "But I won't have Rose, or him if they get hurt. There's nothing I can do about that right now, except I have to try to stop the woman controlling the Cybermen before a lot of people die. Go, save your son."

"God save you, Doctor," Jackson said.

The Doctor took off to where he was headed before, and Jackson took off South. He entered the stable, set down the rod, and used the sonic to find what he was looking for. He quickly shifted a trunk and opened the next one down, searching through clothing for his quarry.

Jed was there. "What the hell is that thing, sir?" he asked the Time Lord.

The Doctor ignored his question. "Oh, good man! Jed, wasn't it?" After the young man nodded in confirmation, he said, "Jed, I need your help!"

He pulled out his quarry, another bandolier of info-stamps and headed toward the door to the yard.

"I'm not going out there!" Jed protested.

The man was no safer in the building than outside of it. Well, actually, he was probably safer outside where nothing could fall on him and he could see what came his way. Doctor tempted him with something that made a lot of humans braver than they'd normally be. "I'll give you five pound notes!"

He could see the internal battle. "Um... All right. What do you want me to do?"

"The TARDIS is gonna fly!" he shouted joyfully. He'd never been in a hot air balloon before. He wished Rose was there to share the excitement. The links between them were wide open, but they weren't deliberately sending anything to one another. He could tell that the two of them had a quick argument earlier, then there was a burst of satisfaction that he assumed was confirmation that the switch had been hit.

But the CyberKing was on its way, buildings crumpled like they were no more than card houses. Why wasn't it stopped?

Hartigan's voice came again. "People of the world! Now hear me. Your governments will surrender. And if not, then behold my power!" One of its mechanical arms raised, but nothing happened. Then the other one raised, and...nothing.

Ha! Rose and his other self weren't able to stop the whole thing, but they had disabled its weaponry!

He tossed the belt of info-stamps into the basket of the hot air balloon and climbed in.

"You're flamin' bonkers, sir!" Ah, you had to love people, insult you and call you sir in the same breath.

"It's been said before!" he retorted. "Now, gimme," he ordered, pointing at the device. Jed handed it to him, and he checked it over. It was still in it's recharge cycle. "Not enough power, oh, come on! Jed! Let her loose!" he ordered the man.

Jed ran to the ropes that secured the balloon and started untying them. "You ever flown one of these before?" he queried.

"Nope! Never! He couldn't keep the excitement out of his voice. It really was an entirely new experience.

"Can I have my money now?" Jed asked nervously.

"Oh, get on with it!" he chided. Humans.

As Jed untied the last rope, the balloon floated upward.

"Good luck to you, sir!" Jed called up.

The Doctor couldn't help but laugh as the balloon rose.

XxXxXxXx

Jackson met Rosita and introduced her to his son. The two of them looked up and saw the blue balloon rise behind the Cyberking.

"It's the TARDIS. She's flying!" Jackson, exclaimed, delighted to see the balloon in the air where she belonged.

XxXxXxXx

Inside the CyberKing, Rose and the part human Doctor were trapped by steam. They had flipped the switch, but the giant robot was still on the move.

"Why are we still moving?" the Doctor asked.

"I don' know!" Rose exclaimed. "The switch didn' work! Or maybe it does somethin' diff'ren'! Maybe it takes a minute! 'S built with steam age technology!" She was frantic. It should have worked. It should have stopped the Cyberking before it ever started moving. They could hear it crushing London below.

Hartigan's amplified voice reverberated through the corridors. "People of the world! Now hear me. Your governments will surrender. And if not, then behold my power!"

There was a sound, like that of a weapon charging up, then it immediately powered down.

"I jus' saw one that wasn' finished, and the plans for one. S'not like 'm and expert or anythin'!"

"Rose, Rose!" the Doctor yelled, having heard what she didn't. "The weapons system isn't working anymore! If I'm right, and I usually am, that switch turned off the weapons!"

Rose was happier when she heard that, at least this trip wasn't a bust after all. She suddenly felt joy and pride from the other Doctor, who had apparently also figured out that they had stopped the weapons.

"Someone's happy," she commented.

The Doctor closed his eyes for a moment and concentrated. The three of them couldn't just reach into each other's minds, mostly it was emotions that got through, unless they were touching, or projecting. Telepathy at a distance was quite a bit harder for the two touch telepaths.

"That bastard," he laughed.

"What?"

"He's in that hot air balloon, flying up to fight a CyberKing! I've always wanted to do that!"

"What? Fight a giant metal robot filled with metal robots with brains inside from a flying device that you have next to no control over?" Rose asked, incredulously.

"No, fly a hot air balloon! He's got a plan, by the way. We just need to get out."

Rose started chewing the side of her thumb again. "Really? What?"

Suddenly, it felt like the whole world spun around, and the pair were thrown to the wall, the Doctor pressed up against Rose.

"That was lucky," Rose commented. "We could have been thrown into the steam."

The pipes nearby on both sides still spewed steam furiously.

"Yeah," the Doctor said as he stepped back from her. "You have any ideas for getting out of here intact? 'Cause I'm completely lost."

"Nope."

"Well, then."

"Yeah."

He pulled her against him and kissed her hard. When he pulled back, she giggled.

"What? It seemed like the thing to do," he cheekily said.

About 5 seconds later, they heard the unmistakable sounds of Cybermen coming from both sides, presumably to find out why the weapons weren't functioning. Both got their info-stamps ready and stood back to back. So they could cover both ways.

One of the Cybermen came through on the Doctor's side first. It registered the time travelers, and their location.

"Unauthorized units will be deleted," it informed them.

"Are you sure you want to do that?" the Doctor asked.

"These units are responsible for the sabotage to the weapons systems, they will be immediately deleted."

"Oh, well, then, I guess you are sure."

" _Doctor, just take 'em out!"_ the woman behind him sent him, as she used her info-stamp on the first one to come through on her side.

The two of them stopped all five Cybermen that came in just a few seconds. Rose had two of them on her side, and the Doctor had three.

"I just had an idea about how we can get through the steam," the Doctor said.

"Cyberman shield?" Rose asked with a grin.

"You know what they say about brilliant minds." His voice low and seductive and he had more than a hint of a smirk on his face.

"I believe it's 'great minds' you're thinkin' of," she countered.

"Oohhhh, same thing," he replied. "You're brilliant, and as soon as we're out of here, I'll show you just how brilliant I think you are."

The two of them worked together to use one of the Cybermen as a shield between them and the steam shooting out. It wasn't easy, but they were past the broken pipes in about a minute. They dropped the makeshift shield and laughed, happy that they were free and unharmed.

A moment later, they ran down the corridor, trying to get free of the Cyberman. They knew that the other Doctor had a plan and they needed to get out as soon as possible.

They turned a corner, and ran straight into a couple of Cybermen. They turned to go the other way, and found three more, and there was no way to go back. The steam would just hold them up again.

Rose got both from the one side, then the info-stamp shorted out and she dropped it. One of the Doctor's info-stamps had stopped working. He was able to get two from his side before the other one gave out.

There was just one left. The Doctor backed up. "Well, if I had known that they were so short lived, I'd have brought more," he quipped.

"Intruders will be deleted."

Suddenly, the Cyberman lunged toward the Doctor, and Rose darted in front of him. The Cyberman grabbed her arm instead, and it sent it's electricity through her body.

XxXxXxXx

On his way up, the Doctor threw sandbags and any unneeded weight down so that he could rise faster.

He felt an inquiry from from his twin, which he answered with a series of images. He told his other self about the balloon and his plan, and implored them to get out as soon as possible.

When the Doctor had finally reached the height where he could talk to Miss Hartigan face to face when it swiveled around to face him. As it turned, he prepared the info-stamps. Using the same idea as his counterpart, he wrapped them around his arm.

"Excellent. The Doctor! Yet another man come to assert himself against me in the night," Hartigan sneered. "Is the Big, Bad Wolf going eat me?" She laughed.

The Doctor stilled. He had rarely seen or heard those words when they weren't directly about the old fairy tale since Rose sent them through Time, but he had seen them: in Japanese on a poster on New Earth, the name of the virus that wiped records from Torchwood, and, of course just before Rose came back just to name a few. It was never anything good when not referencing Rose directly.

"Miss Hartigan, I'm offering you a choice, you might have the most remarkable mind this world has ever seen. Strong enough to control the Cybermen themselves."

"I don't need you to sanction me!" she rebuked him.

"No, but such a mind deserves to live!" he tried to tell her. "The Cybermen came to this world using a Dimension Vault. I can use that device to find you a home. With no people to convert. But a new world where you can live out your mechanical life in peace!

"I have the world below, and it is abundant with so many minds, ready to become extensions of me. Why would I leave this place?"

He felt a jolt of fear come through the links with his twin and Rose, stronger than any of the other emotional twinges he had gotten from them thus far. He pushed the thoughts of what may be happening to them away. He'd ask, but he knew he'd probably just distract them at the worst time to do so.

"Because if you don't, I'll have to stop you," he told her simply.

"What do you make of me, sir? An idiot?" she queried, incredulously.

Suddenly, he felt a spike of fear from his counterpart, followed very closely by extreme pain from Rose. Then the link to Rose cut off abruptly.

XxXxXxXx

Inside the Cyberman, the Doctor watched in fear as the woman he loved was electrocuted. No one ever survived that, and he almost reached for her, to join her when the Cyberman stopped sending electricity into her.

Instead of Rose dropping to the ground immediately, she stood there and put her hand on the Cyberman. Its "eyes" glowed gold for a second, then it dropped.

Rose turned around, her eyes were a stronger gold than he had ever seen before, not counting the incident that changed her in the first place. When her eyes went gold, the lightest colors in her iris changed color first, the brighter her eyes went, the more shades changed. This time, only the darkest colors remained brown. And her eyes actually had a luminous quality that lit up her cheekbones.

"Be safe, my Doctor," she told him in the dual layered voice he'd only once before heard outside of her mind. "Do not worry about me, I will be fine, it is only a shock. This part of me only came out to save you from the metal men. Take this, you will, did need it, and I have forgotten, will forget about it."

She pulled a battered Vortex manipulator from her pocket and handed it to him. He remembered Rose tinkering with it, and not wanting him to fix it because she wanted to do it herself.

"Tenses are so difficult," she commented, then laughed. "When I let go, I have been asleep for fifty-seven seconds. Use that." She waved at the leather strap distastefully. "You wanted to catch me."

Her task done, the gold in her eyes disappeared, and she dropped to the floor like a sack of potatoes. He caught her before she hit the ground, and laid her down gently. The Bad Wolf assured him that Rose would be fine, and his mind began a countdown until the moment Rose would wake.

He knew his other self would have felt what happened, and sent him reassurance that Rose was fine and told him to go on with the plan.

He sat down next to her, pulled out his sonic, and set to work on the Vortex manipulator. It was the one Rose had found in the other universe, and Rose had it working for everything there, but when she came over here, it stopped working. She had gotten it to where it would work as short range teleportation for one, but it still needed calibration to this universe's vortex before it could do anything more.

As promised, exactly fifty-seven seconds after the gold left her eyes, Rose woke up with a gasp.

"Ow," she complained as she held her head. "Those Cybermen always pack a wallop."

He swore his heart stopped. "What do you mean by always?" he asked with his eyes narrowed.

"They're not all gone," she told him. "In the other universe, one pops up every now and then."

"You should have told me you could survive their shocks," he said. "I wouldn't have been quite as worried about you."

"Liar," she called him out on it. "Hold on, what're ya doin' with that?"

"You gave it to me," he answered. "You said that you had forgotten it, well what you actually said was-"

"When was this?" she interrupted.

"Just about a minute and a half ago. You told me that you'd be fine and gave me this to work on." He sighed. "But you don't remember that, do you? You took out that Cyberman somehow," he pointed to the offending metal man, "and were all, Bad Wolfy."

Rose looked at him with her mouth opened, then snapped it closed. "I didn'...know, you know...abou' that. I still have that much power?"

"Apparently." He strapped on the Vortex manipulator, hit a couple of buttons, got up off the floor, and reached his hand out for her. "Can you stand yet?"

In his mind, he heard, _"Are you out of there yet?"_

" _Leaving now."_

"Yeah, I think so." She grabbed his hand and pulled herself into a standing position.

"Ready?"

"No, but allons-y."

He grinned at her use of his favorite word and kissed her as he pushed the button. Nothing happened.

"What?"

"It needs calibration to this universe's Vortex," she told him. "I've only been able to get it to work as a short range teleport for one, maybe if you could expand it to two?"

"I know about the calibration. I'm a bloody Time Lord, I can calibrate a damned space hopper to the Vortex," he ground out, not angry so much as worried about the fact that they needed to be out of there.

The explosions began again.

XxXxXxXx

No, not cut off, the Doctor's link to Rose just dropped down to almost nothing so suddenly that it felt like it was gone. She was still alive. They'd all had their links wide open for a couple of hours, and the sudden loss of the contact almost crippled him for a moment.

He felt a reassurance from his other self that Rose was okay. _"Go on with the plan, we have a way out."_

They hurt Rose.

"No. The question is, what do you make of me?" he asked, coldly. He aimed the info-stamps at the Cyberking.

"Destroy him!" Hartigan ordered.

"You make me into this." He fired the info-stamp. The beam hit Hartigan's head, more specifically, the device sitting atop it. He let it go until it stopped completely, then he let the info-stamps drop to the floor of the basket.

"Then I have made you a failure. Your weapons are useless, sir!"

"I wasn't trying to kill you. All I did was break the Cyber connection," he informed her. "Leaving your mind open. Open, I think, for the first time in far too many years." He swallowed. "So you can see. Just look at yourself. Look at what you've done."

She looked around at her surroundings.

Suddenly, he felt Rose come back to consciousness and his other self's relief.

"I'm sorry, Miss Hartigan, but look at what you've become. I'm so sorry," he finished.

Miss Hartigan looked around in realization and screamed. Her screams became louder as she used the device that still sat on her head to destroy the Cybermen with her, finally ending with her own death.

" _Are you out of there yet?"_ he asked his twin.

" _Leaving now."_

Explosions rocked the gargantuan machine and it stumbled. The rod of the Dimensional Vault gave a beep, and he picked it up. He looked it over quickly to be sure. "Yep, now you're ready."

He aimed the device at the CyberKing.

XxXxXxXx

" _Rose, are you two out of there yet?"_ the Time Lord Doctor asked through their link.

" _Not yet, my teleport will only work for one, we thought we had it fixed, but..."_

 _Whatever you have to do, I want_ you _out of there now! The CyberKing's about to fall!"_

Another explosion rocked the CyberKing, and she was thrown to the side and slid down the hallway, the Doctor just behind her. The hallway righted itself, and the two of them skidded to a stop. The Doctor had to spread his legs to keep from kicking Rose in the head as he stopped.

He put his sonic back to the Vortex manipulator and worked on it some more, not bothering to get back up.

Rose tried to get back up, but then fell against the wall as the CyberKing rocked another way.

" _Rose, where are you, I have to do this now!"_

" _Working on it!"_

She stopped trying to get up and just crawled over to where the Doctor was working on her Vortex manipulator. He had the face of it open and he poked around inside, all of his concentration on the device.

"Rose, hold this up!" he ordered tersely.

She grabbed the covering flap of the Vortex manipulator so that it wouldn't fall over anymore.

She felt the other Doctor's extreme worry. He had to do whatever he was going to do within a few seconds, or a lot of people would die.

The Doctor closed the panel on the Vortex manipulator and pressed some buttons on it.

" _Do it, Doctor!"_ she sent to him.

" _Are you out?"_

" _No, but we'll be out in a second, just do it!"_

" _Then no."_

She sent everything she had into her next thought, _"DON'T YOU DARE!"_

The man next to her winced with the force of it. He pressed her hand to the Vortex manipulator and pushed one last button.

XxXxXxXx

They still weren't out of the Cyberking. He had 4.3 seconds to hit the trigger on the Dimension Vault or the CyberKing would fall on London, killing, who knew how many people.

" _Do it, Doctor!"_ she sent to him.

" _Are you out?"_ Oh please let her be out, don't make him make this impossible choice. He begged the universe, the multiverse, all of the Gods he didn't believe in, and the one Goddess that he did.

" _No, but we'll be out in a second, just do it!"_ It's just a second, he could wait. He had the thing pointed and he was ready to shoot it at the signal that they were out of there.

" _Then no."_ He would not put her in any more danger, he wouldn't make the same decision he had made all the way back in Van Statten's bunker. Even then, he had let a Dalek go free rather than trap her a second time.

" _DON'T YOU DARE!"_ The full force of her mind sent at him. It was much, much stronger than he had ever guessed, and the full weight of it had him tensing his whole body and he involuntarily twitched his finger on the trigger of the Dimension Vault.

He watched in horror as the blue and white light came out of it. It engulfed the giant, metal robot. It froze in midair, and disappeared. At the same time, his links with both of them died out.

Instantly, he felt dead inside, just like he had after Canary Wharf. He should have known it could never last. He should have known something would happen. He was too damned happy. He didn't deserve it. He destroyed everything.

Rose being a human/Time Lord-ish/TARDIS hybrid, and having another Time Lord on hand, even if that other one was a short lived version of himself who had become like a brother to him were just too much of what he wanted.

He looked down at the ground below, mesmerized. NO, no, he couldn't do that. Rose would want him to go on. She rewrote years of time so that he would live, he would not let her sacrifice be in vain.

Rose was gone. So was his 'brother,' who he loved for himself, even though he hated him for being him.

And he was alone again.

He never even noticed the people below him cheering.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One last chapter, then this'll be done.


	6. Vortex

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Okay, this is the last chapter of this story, well, this part of the story. As always, I don't own anything you recognize from Doctor Who.

He was alone again.

He didn't notice the people below him cheering.

He didn't notice the perfect night, the light breeze, or how the stars showed in a way that they never would again over London after electric light became a thing.

He didn't notice the crushed area of town, or the couple of fires burning, or even the fact that the destruction and death would have been all over the city if Rose hadn't remembered those plans and tried to stop the CyberKing.

He did notice the screaming silence in his head.

He did notice the cold of December that seeped into his bones the way they shouldn't and made even his cool breath fog up. As if he needed a reminder that he still breathed.

He sat up there for nearly 20 minutes. He actually lost track of how much time. If it weren't for the spire of a cathedral passing him by, he'd have sat there longer.

He finished his descent, alternately using the valve and the burner to drop the balloon fast, but not too fast. He almost tore the bottom on someone's weather vane on the way down. It probably would never work quite right ever again. Not that he cared.

XxXxXxXx

Jackson ran up to him as he touched down. He had followed the Doctor's descent through town.

"That was brilliant, Sir!" he exclaimed enthusiastically. "Where's the other Doctor and Rose?"

His exuberance faded when he saw the look on the Doctor's face. The Doctor's face was a mask, but his eyes were haunted and he looked like a man that had lost everything he held dear.

"They were still...?" He couldn't get the rest of his question out.

The Doctor knew what he was asking, and nodded. He looked away and watched the people around put their things back upright.

Jackson looked around at the people around them, fixing up their things in the middle of the night on Christmas. In the morning, they would gather with their families and celebrate the holiday. Life would go on, but for the moment, it was time to grieve.

He walked with the Doctor in silence.

XxXxXxXx

He slowly walked toward the TARDIS, the only being that hadn't left him, yet.

He replayed the previous two days in his mind.

Rose's happiness to be given a screwdriver and a sword that was just like the one she used to have, with a couple of additional details.

His other self's laughter when presented with the gift of edible ball bearings.

Little Tony's joy playing with that glider.

Jackie's protectiveness over her daughter. He needed to tell Jackie. He couldn't leave her hanging.

The memories forwarded to their last night together, how she tasted, how she felt.

How they both looked tangled up together, the sheen of sweat as they vigorously made love.

The way she greeted the man they thought was him in the future, and the way that she was so sad to think that he forgot her. He'd have to forget everything about himself to have a chance of forgetting her. Actually, he _had_ forgot himself, with the fob watch, and still remembered her.

Rose's brilliance in solving the mystery of the man who thought that he was the Doctor. Her bravery in fighting off that Cyberman with a sword.

He'll miss them terribly, both of them. But he'd not regret a single minute of the time he had with her after giving in. Not one. He'd always be terribly grateful to his other self for his insight.

He'd died for her before. Now he'll live for her.

The memories forwarded to the last moments; talking to Hartigan and both of them at the same time; her insistence that he not put her ahead of the unknown number of people below. Her telepathic shout that forced him to pull the trigger. It took the decision out of his hands. He did not want to have the decision. He'd begged his goddess not to have the decision. And the Wolf came through.

Be careful what you wish for.

Back up.

Talking to Hartigan.

"Is the Big, Bad Wolf going eat me?"

Big, Bad Wolf.

_**Bad Wolf** _

XxXxXxXx

" _Attention all personnel. Bad Wolf One descending. Bad Wolf One descending."_

He closed a door on her, trapping her with a Dalek. She survived to come back to him.

XxXx

" _Now, you tell me, God of all Daleks, because there's one thing I never worked out. The words Bad Wolf, spread across time and space, everywhere, drawing me in. How'd you manage that?"_

He sent her away to save her life, she came back a goddess and saved his.

XxXx

" _But she told me to warn you. She said two words."_  
_"What two words? What were they? What did she say?"_  
_"Bad Wolf."_

_He rushed out of the fortune teller's tent to see the Two Words everywhere, even on the TARDIS._

He had sent her away again and she came back, only to be torn from him. She came back to him yet again, from another universe.

XxXxXxXx

Did he dare hope? Or would he just tear himself apart again.

Too late, he didn't have a choice. The seeds of hope grew in his hearts.

He ran.

XxXxXxXx

Jackson Lake walked in silence next to the Doctor, who walked morosely off in some direction he couldn't fathom.

He wanted to invite the man to dinner for Christmas, but he was certain that he wouldn't want to eat for a long time.

So, for the moment, he'd offer his companionship. Not to travel, mind you. He was a widower with a young son, but just for now, as a friend who knew what he was going through, who was going through the same thing himself.

Misery loves company.

Suddenly, the Doctor stopped moving. He stood there for a moment with a look of...hope? He then ran, and Jackson ran after him.

"Jackson!" the Doctor called, seemingly without the need for breath. "Did you hear everything Miss Hartigan said up there?"

"Yes!" he replied, not being able to do anything more than that at the moment. He had been listening intently to the conversation, her side of it anyway, as he couldn't hear the Doctor.

"Did she say anything about a wolf?" the Doctor asked as they ran around a corner.

Jackson had to stop for a moment to catch his breath. The action forced the Doctor to stop and come back to hear his answer.

When he returned, Jackson could see the change in the man. He looked manic, he practically bounced, and he seemed to be waiting for his words with anticipation and more than a bit of dread. It was a bit scary, actually.

"She said something about a bad wolf eating her," he informed the man between breaths. The man's dread lifted, and he looked almost...happy? "Why are you asking about fairy tales?"

"Come on, Jackson! Run with me, and I'll tell you a story."

They continued running, and Jackson couldn't figure out why they needed to run, or where they were running to. They only went a couple more streets over before they stopped in an alley, where a large, blue box sat on the ground. The Doctor stopped there and turned around to look at Jackson.

"A long time ago, when I was in my last body, I sent Rose away to save her life, she used my ship-" At the word ship, he patted the box lovingly. "-To swallow Time and come back to save me." He turned his full attention back to Jackson. "While she was a goddess, she used the power to send words across all of time and space. They were supposed to be a message, but I always thought that it was mostly random. I'm starting to believe that much of it wasn't random at all, maybe none. That woman said Bad Wolf in an odd context, and for a moment, just a moment, I believed that I had made it up, but you heard it too!"

Jackson wondered what was going on. Was the Doctor 's mind breaking like his did? Why did they run here, to this blue box?

Blue. Ship. Doctor

"Is this it?" he asked. "Is this the TARDIS?"

"Yeah, it is." He grinned proudly. "I might be able to use the TARDIS to find Rose, and wherever Rose is, my twin will be as well!"

"I thought that you could feel them in your mind?" Jackson asked.

"Normally, I can," the Doctor replied. "But not if we aren't in the same time." He opened the door and went inside, waving Jackson in with him.

"They were sent into the Vortex." Jackson said as they walked up to the console. "Could the Cybermen come back from it? I thought they'd be disintegrated, but-"

"No," the Doctor interrupted Jackson. "I know your fear, but it doesn't work like that. They'd have to have equipment that could travel in time to be able to travel anywhere before they were disintegrated." He went to the monitor and typed in the commands. They wouldn't be far.

"But Rose and the Doctor..."

"They have a Vortex manipulator on them. It hasn't worked right in a while, but Rose fixed it enough to allow for a short range teleport for one person. She kept it in her pockets, because we have a habit of getting separated from the ship with almost no way of getting to it. She thought it might come in handy."

Jackson listened to the Doctor babble and, to his surprise, he was actually able to follow most of what the Doctor said. "Teleport?" he asked.

"Oh, it's a device to make people disappear from one place and reappear in another. It usually feels bad to use, but handy in a pinch."

"But if it could only be used for one person..." Jackson trailed off.

"If they were able to get it to function enough to time travel, it would have been able to be used for both of them."

XxXxXxXx

While the Doctor explained things to Jackson, a small part of his mind wondered when the man would realize that he had just walked into a tiny box with a bigger room on the inside. He always did enjoy the reactions from people when they walked in the TARDIS for the first time.

"...would have been able to be used for both of them," he finished. When Jackson didn't ask another question, he looked up at the man, who turned in a slow circle, finally taking the room in. He walked to the doors and did the traditional look around the box, then walked back inside, amazement written all over his face.

"Oh, my word," he said, slowly. He walked back up to the console and looked around the room again. "Oh, goodness me! But this is...This is nonsense!"

"Well, um, that's one word for it, I guess." There was a new reaction to add to his collection.

"Complete and utter, wonderful nonsense! How very, very-"

The console beeped, indicating that it had finished it's scan and interrupting Jackson, who had been a bit overwhelmed at the 'bigger on the inside' concept.

He rushed over to the monitor and looked at it, repeating, "Please, please," over and over again, just as the door to the time ship opened up again.

XxXxXxXx

The Doctor winced at the force of Rose's mental shout at the other Doctor. It wasn't directed at him, and it still hurt.

He grabbed Rose's hand and made sure it touched the Vortex manipulator as much as possible, then pressed the button. Instantly, he felt the familiar and hated sensation of traveling through the Vortex without a capsule. He anticipated the landing, but it still felt like he was being hit in the head with an ax and his breath had been stolen from him. It was worse this time than with Jack's manipulator, and he assumed that was because of the physiological changes.

They had left sitting on the floor, because the Dreadnought class ship had been jerking all over the place, and materialized about a foot off of the ground. Both scrambled to get up quickly. Neither one knew what they would find when and where they landed.

Only a second's look showed the Doctor that they had landed in London. It looked like it was the same night. People were all around, picking up things that were knocked over when everyone ran from the gargantuan robot. He wondered what this version of the CyberKing had actually looked like, as they had only seen it from the inside. Not a single person had apparently noticed their arrival in the middle of London. Typical.

He still felt like he was going to fall over, and looked over to Rose to make sure she was okay. She had just had a major shock to her system. What he saw made his jaw drop.

She stood there, almost bouncing with a kind of manic energy. She looked like she wasn't sick, had a headache, or anything. She looked like she felt good.

"Wow, that's a rush!" she exclaimed. Then her eyebrows furrowed. "Wait. In the other universe, that hurt like hell. Did I not fix it ri- Doctor, are you okay?" She had finally noticed his state.

"Unprotected travel through the Vortex is supposed to hurt," he told her, as the last vestiges of the nausea left him.

"Oh, so why did it not hurt? No, that's later. We've got bigger fish to fry. WQhere's the Doctor? It looks like we've been gone for a little while," she fired off quickly. Rose closed her eyes and looked like she was concentrating on something, probably trying to contact the other Doctor to let him know they were there.

He concentrated on his link. Moving through time had made it impossible to feel one another. All he could get from his other self was the fact that he was there, in the same time. His other self had apparently completely closed off the links, which meant that he thought they were dead.

"I can feel 'im, but he's...locked away?" Rose asked. "I can't get through."

"Yeah, we need to find him as soon as possible," he replied. "What would I do if...?"

"The Vortex manipulator. It can detect life signs," Rose said excitedly. She then deflated. "Oh," she realized. "I don't exactly have his information programmed."

"Rose Tyler, you're a genius!" He praised, glad that he didn't have to try to figure out where his other self was.

"What?"

"Use this to find him!"

"But we don't have him to scan, so-Oh!" she realized.

"Yep. We have me, and I know the life signs of a Time Lord better than the back of my hand, spare or otherwise."

A quick bit of programming later, and they used it to search for the Doctor. Nothing came back.

"But he's here, I know he is," Rose said. "I can feel him and the TARDIS."

"And what is capable of hiding such unique signs?" he prodded her.

"The TARDIS!" She turned to take off, then stopped. "Um, how do we get to it?" she asked sheepishly.

"It's your city," he pointed out.

"Yeah, 130 some-odd years before I was born!" she retorted. "Most of these buildings don' even exist anymore. And 'm not entirely sure where we parked the TARDIS anyway."

"136, and this way." He laughed and turned to go down an alley, Rose on his heels.

XxXxXxXx

The door opened, and there stood the other Doctor. The part human man looked rough. His suit jacket had a tear in it where a button had been pulled off. The tie he wore that day was very loose and skewed. He also had a bruise that had started showing at his temple.

He was happy to see his other self. Glad he was... His mind trailed off, as he saw a glimpse of blonde hair behind his double as the door opened the rest of the way.

As soon as Rose was in the TARDIS, he ran over to her and grabbed her up off of the floor by her waist. She quickly wrapped her arms around his neck and held on as he rocked back and forth. He became aware that he was repeating the words, "You're alive. You're really alive," over and over again.

After a minute, she replied, "I love you too, Doctor, but you're squishing me."

She was obviously a bit out of breath, and he realized just how tight he held her. He loosened up and let Rose back down to the floor. Then, he turned to his counterpart, and hugged him too.

XxXxXxXx

The Doctor watched the Doctor hug Rose. When he put her down, he came over to him and, unexpectedly, wrapped his arms around him. The part human Doctor just stood there, unsure of his other self's reaction. The reaction with Rose, yes, but not him, he hated himself, said so many times. After a second, he thought, well, sod it. It's just a hug, and relaxed into it.

"Oh, I am so glad to see that you're both safe!" Jackson exclaimed. "Though you both look like you've been through Hell and back."

"Not quite," Rose responded. "Hell's much worse."

While Rose had been talking to Jackson, the Doctor in brown grabbed pulled back from the hug and crashed his lips against those of his blue suited double's quickly, then pulled away and turned his attention to the other two.

"Where were you?" Jackson asked. "I thought you were dead, and he thought so too. Then he started going on about-"

"We were nowhere, Jackson," Rose replied. "We jumped from right before he did whatever he was going to do, to a couple of minutes before we walked in here. That's time travel for you," Rose replied.

"We didn't have the time to refine the coordinates further. Really, we were lucky to be able to make it to the same city on the same day," the part human Doctor said.

They talked for a couple more moments, then walked Jackson out of the TARDIS before he became overwhelmed again.

"This city will recover, as London always does," Jackson told them once they were outside again. "Though the events of today will be history, spoken of for centuries to come!"

"Yeah, you'd think so, wouldn't you?" Rose queried, with a look over at the part human Doctor.

"Funny, that," he replied a moment later. That was odd, he didn't remember a single bit of this being in history. The only major destructive events of 1851 that he could remember was a fire in the Library of Congress in America, which took out close to 30,000 volumes in, well, the day they landed, actually, and the San Francisco fire in May, which killed 30 people.

But then again, time can be rewritten. They'd look it up when they got back to the 21st century.

"And a new history begins for me," Jackson continued. "I find myself a widower, but with my son and with a good friend."

"Now, take care of that one. She's marvelous," the Doctor in brown praised.

"I like her," Rose added.

"She's fantastic," the blue suited Doctor put in.

"Frederic will need a nursemaid and I can think of none better," Jackson said. "But you three. It's Christmas, and you're welcome to join us at the Traveler's Halt."

"Oh, I'd be delighted to, Jackson," Rose accepted, happily, before either Doctor could decline. After that, the Doctors had no choice but to accept as well.

Jackson held out his arm for Rose, and she looped hers with it. She turned around and winked at both of them, and gestured for them to follow.

" _The little minx,"_ the part human Doctor complained to his other self, who returned the sentiment.

As they walked to where Jackson's son and Rosita were waiting for him, Rose told him, "You know, you made a great Doctor."

"Really?" Jackson asked. "I was chasing those beasts for a fortnight before you three came in and handled everything-"

"That's not what I was talking about, Jackson," Rose interrupted him. "I really believed you were a future regeneration for a good bit, and it's not easy to fool me like that. I'm a suspicious sort."

"She really is," the Time Lord agreed. "I regenerated right in front of her, and she thought I had kidnapped my past self!"

"Oh, hush you. You didn't really tell me anything beforehand, wasting time with stuff about Barcelona."

"Really?" Jackson asked, "I did alright?"

"Oh yes, you made a wonderful Doctor, for the most part," she affirmed.

"The most part!" he exclaimed. "And where could I improve?"

"Oh, Jackson, women don't like to be told what they should be..."

The Doctors both laughed as Rose began educating Jackson on women's liberation.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: the destructive events of 1851 that the Doctor mused on really did happen. Dec 24th, the Library of Congress lost close to 2/3rd of it's collection, and on May 4th most of San Francisco was destroyed by a fire that started at close to 11pm on the 3rd.


	7. Aftermath

After a wonderful meal, where everyone laughed and shared stories, Rose and the Doctors bade the Lakes and Rosita goodbye. The trio walked back to the TARDIS, Rose hand in hand with the Time Lord, who was being particularly clingy at the moment. She didn't blame him one bit, he just thought that she was dead for over an hour.

When they stepped back inside of the TARDIS, everyone shrugged off their coats and threw them in their usual places. The Time Lord's trench coat went over the coral strut to the right, The human Doctor's black trench coat went over the coral strut to the left, and Rose's leather one went over the railing. The three of them then went to their usual places around the console and dematerialized the TARDIS into the Vortex.

This was a routine that the three of them had fell in to by accident. Well, mostly accident, there were a couple of dirty looks at the beginning when one of them would have to move the other's coat to get to their own.

As soon as they were safely in the Vortex, the Doctor in the brown suit pulled her to him and brought his lips to hers with a level of passion he usually didn't possess-not since their bond had settled anyway. Rose kissed back enthusiastically. She stood up on her tip toes and ran her fingers through his hair as he wrapped his arms around her waist.

She felt the other Doctor's presence behind her just before he put his hands on her shoulders. What happened next wasn't what she expected, though.

"I'm sorry, I really hate to break this up. Really, really, hate to," he apologized, "but now that we're alone and in the TARDIS, you, Rose Tyler, have been putting this off long enough,"the Doctor in blue said matter of factly.

The other two broke apart suddenly and gave him matching dirty looks.

Rose groaned. "I'm fine!" she protested.

"Wait, what?" the other Doctor asked, confused.

"I don't need to get checked out," Rose added.

"Is something wrong?" The Time Lord questioned his other self, worriedly.

"She got electrocuted by a Cyberman, then we had a visit from Bad Wolf, and then, to top it all off, when we used the Vortex manipulator, she claimed it didn't hurt and looked like she felt good," the Doctor in blue informed him.

"'She's' about to give you both a smack if you keep talking about 'er like she's not 'ere," Rose grumbled.

The Doctor in brown looked back and forth between Rose and his twin, wide eyed. He opened his mouth and closed it several times, then squeaked out, "you were electrocuted?"

"Yes, I was," Rose admitted with a shrug. "A Cyberman was goin' after 'im, an' I jumped in front of it. I knew I could survive it. Didn't know if 'e could or not."

The Doctor in brown stared at Rose wide eyed. "I don't know what to be most concerned about, the electrocution, the fact that you can shrug it off like that, or the reemergence of Bad Wolf. I agree with him, why didn't either of you tell me this before?"

"Wha'? Not concerned about the other thing?" Rose asked, testily. She really was tired of being a science experiment. "'M alrigh'," she restated.

"She's okay, but I still wanna run-" The Doctor in blue started.

"No more tests!" Rose interrupted him. "'M tired of bein' poked and prodded all the time. You two run a bunch of tests every week, and they tell ya nothin'. I feel like a lab rat!"

"They don't tell us 'nothing,'" the Doctor in blue defended. "It's a progression of your changes and-"

"Doctor," she cut him off, "an' this is directed to both of you this time, jus' so ya know. Does it make a difference?"

"Does what make a difference?" the Doctor in brown asked.

"My changes," she answered. "Do the changes happenin' to me make a difference?"

XxXxXxXx

"Well, of course, they do," the Doctor replied, unwittingly.

A look of hurt passed over Rose's face. A look he knew all to well, and he instantly knew that was the wrong answer.

"What this Dunce, who I swear lost half his brain in the metacrisis, is trying to say," the other man said derisively, "is that you could be allergic to, say aspirin, like us, and it'd be nice to know about that beforehand."

"Yes! We need to be certain that you're okay, that the changes in you aren't going to cause any problems," he picked up the explanation gratefully, happy for once for that bit of Donna in his other self that allowed the man to understand human women better. He glossed over the insult, he'd deserved it.

"After what just happened today," the part human Doctor added, "I should have checked you out as soon as we got back here."

Rose looked pacified, a bit, anyway, but she was still angry. "I understand that," she told them. "Today, I said an' did thin's I don' remember." She looked discomposed at that realization, and all her anger left her. "Oh, fine then, but do we 'ave to do the reg'lar testing so often? I mean 'snot like things really change in a week."

He and his double glanced at each other, they didn't need telepathy to be sure what the other was thinking, they were, essentially, the same man after all.

"Okay," they said together.

"Now that we've established that the changes are very slow, we can do it less often," the Time Lord conceded.

"But we do need to look you over tonight," his twin added, just to be sure they were all in agreement.

After several tests, the Doctors determined that Rose was perfectly fine, which caused both of them to be on the receiving end of the human tradition of "I Told You So."

There was one change noted, though, an increase in artron energy, more than could be accounted for with normal time travel.

Everyone who went through the Vortex picked up traces of artron, it was a sort of radiation that stuck to all beings and things that passed through the Vortex. Artron energy powered the regeneration process. If a Time Lord had no artron, or it was inhibited, he/she wouldn't be able to regenerate. It was healing, gave an immune boost to humans, and allowed frequent time travelers to age just a bit slower, but not much.

The TARDIS refined it and used it. Hanging out in the Vortex would charge a TARDIS, but it was done much faster if they parked at a rift for a while.

Rose used bits of her energy sometimes when caring for the TARDIS coral, they all knew that. It would allow the little one to be ready a minimum of six months sooner, and it was only small amounts. They kept an eye on Rose's levels, though, just in case.

But too much artron was damaging. The levels of a Time Lord would go down with a new body, which kept them from building up too much. A large burst of artron energy would also send one into regeneration. That's how his second life had ended, through a forced regeneration. and his last body, old big ears and leather, died because of the artron energy he took out of Rose with everything else.

"Wait, I have an idea," Rose said, as she looked at the screen with the artron chart with the Doctors. "When we used the Vortex manipulator, I felt good, really good, like I had drunk several energy drinks right after I woke up, good," she explained.

"Yeah, it would have added some, but that wouldn't account for this spike in energy. The use of some on the Cyberman should have used quite a bit," the Doctor who had been on the trip with her countered.

"Yeah, but I remember wha' both of you 'ave told me about it," she told them, "and you know 'ow we usually feel excited when we're goin' somewhere?" she asked.

"Yeah?" the Doctor in brown said, not sure where she was going with this.

"What if it's not entirely our own feelings?" she queried, knowingly.

Suddenly, it clicked in his mind, and he could see that it had clicked for his part human twin as well. He thought about it. It made sense. The TARDIS usually communicated in shocks and emotions, sometimes a picture or two, and by switching rooms around. But she did usually seem happy when they were flying from one place to another. Sometimes even when sparking.

The TARDIS gained a bit of energy when her shell was flying through the Vortex. And Rose had some TARDIS-y bits stuck to her DNA. She had said that it felt like she'd had energy drinks.

"How do you feel right now?" he asked her as he leaned back against the counter with his hands in his pockets.

"Fine," she replied.

"Not overly energetic?" he queried.

"Nope," she popped her 'p'.

"How did you feel after you woke from the shock?" his twin with the one heart asked her as he crossed his arms and regarded her.

"Kinda sick and like my head 'ad been bashed in," she answered.

"Are you feeling like you normally do about the time I hit the sack?"

"Wow, 'as it been tha' long since we got up already?" Rose wondered.

"Yeah, I'm a bit knackered," he admitted. He scratched the back of his neck with his right hand and made a disgusted face. "So, are you feeling like you may need to sleep within the next few hours?" he asked.

"I can't say wha' I'll feel like in a few hours, but right now, I feel fine an' ready to go," she told them both, shrugging.

"Okay, then. We'll keep an eye on your artron levels over the next few days," the Time Lord said. "Let us know if you experience a crash in energy not consistent with your usual patterns."

"If you have to use the space hopper again," the other Doctor said, with a distasteful look on his face, "I want to check your levels right afterward."

He nodded his head in agreement with him.

Rose's lips quirked up in a smile. "That 'space hopper' you hate so much just saved our lives," she teased.

"Only because I made it work," he countered. "It's a pogo stick compared to a sports car."

Rose laughed loudly over that. She walked over to the wall and patted it. "You 'ear that, Love?" she asked the sentient ship, "he called you a sports car! I think you're more of a luxury model, myself."

They all heard the hum change and felt a sense of smugness. The Time Lord Doctor laughed, and the part human shook his head.

"Oh, If we've been up tha' long, I've gotta check on the TARDIS coral," Rose realized. "I 'ad to adjust the mister this morning. Might 'ave ta take it apart an' clean it out again," she said with a grimace. The minerals added to the water would sometimes clog it up.

"I'll come with," the part human quickly volunteered. "It's on the way to bed, and I'd like a peek in on the little one. Haven't looked in a while. Could help with the mister too."

"Be back soon," Rose told him, before she disappeared.

He put the detector back in it's place, leaned back against the counter again, and put his hands back in his pockets. This was the first moment he had been alone with his thoughts since it had been confirmed that the other two had been alive. He thought back on the hour and a half that he had thought that Rose and his twin were dead.

Once again, he had thought that she was gone forever and he'd have to live on without her. And he'd had no regrets, not counting the last couple of seconds, which really, the last seconds of any way you're going to lose someone you care about are going to be a bit regretful.

It was freeing, to know for a fact that he had no more regrets in that area.

With this thought in his mind, he went to the lab where they kept the TARDIS coral.

XxXxXxXx

Rose used her new sonic to take apart the coral mister. She didn't need to, but it was the first chance she had really had to use it, and she had to take it.

"This stuff really clogs up the mister quickly," the Doctor grumbled.

"Yeah, but the end result will be worth it," Rose replied, with a fond look at the TARDIS coral. The coral had grown to the size of a beach ball, and looked exactly like the struts in the console room. "She's getting' big, ain't she?"

"Yeah, she's gonna get a lot bigger, and she's gonna be needing to be removed from that tank soon," he told her. "She'd have been in the first tank we had her for two centuries without the faster growth." He put the nozzle in the solution that would eat away the mineral buildup.

"Wait, what's the downside of growing a TARDIS this fast?" she asked, mentally kicking herself for not thinking about that sooner.

He took off his glasses and looked at the coral thoughtfully. "Well, not much, actually," he replied. "After the initial growth, there won't be any difference, but at first, she may have a hard time integrating new systems." He looked over at Rose and added, "don't worry, though, with all three of us working on her, she'll be fine."

"Brilliant TARDISes," they heard from the door, "she'll be fine."

Rose looked to the door where the Time Lord stood. He leaned against the frame with his hands in his pockets and a smile on his face.

Rose grinned back at him as she put another piece of the mister in the solution the other Doctor had whipped up. The solution fizzed as it ate away at the minerals. "This stuff works great, and is a damned sight better than scrubbing all the gunk away." She dropped the last piece that needed cleaning into the solution and watched it bubble away. "How long will the pieces need to stay in?" she asked the part human Doctor.

"About 10 minutes," he replied. "Don't want to keep the stuff in there for too long."

Rose sat back and looked at each Doctor as she debated how to bring up the subject that had been bothering her for a while. "So," she started, drawing out the 'o', "The Cybermen from the Void, using Dalek technology."

"Yep," was all both Doctors could say.

"Joy," she sarcastically remarked. "What's the likelihood of more than jus' tha' group gettin' out?"

Judging from the looks both of the Doctors gave her, neither of them had thought about it.

"It's possible," the part human admitted after a moment.

"We're gonna be playin' innergalactic whack-a-mole for a while, aren't we?" she leaned her head back and hit the wall of the lab a couple of times.

"Now, you stop beatin' your head against the wall, Missy," the Time Lord admonished her, without much heat. She hadn't hit her head hard, just a tap, and he knew it.

"There's nothing we can do about it now," the Doctor in blue added. "If anything else got out, we'll come across them eventually, we always do," he sighed.

Rose sat there with her head back against the wall. She'd fought Daleks five different times: Van Statten's, the Game Station, 70 a.d., Canary Wharf, and the Medusa Cascade. She'd gone to great lengths to stop them, and the Doctor had gone even further. She'd fought Cybermen three times by the Doctor's side, and half a dozen times in Pete's World. Now it appeared they might never be entirely rid of them.

They sat in silence for a few moments, each lost in their own thoughts. The part human Doctor yawned once during that time, and Rose thought that he should go to bed.

10 minutes after they put the pieces in, they all put gloves on and grabbed pieces out of the acidic solution. They cleaned them off, using a small, hard bristled brush to get the last tiny bit of build up out of the nozzle, put the mister back together and set it back up like it should be.

When they had the mister spraying the mineral laced solution on the coral again, the part human Doctor finally decided to go to bed and the other two cleaned up.

"I need a shower," Rose complained.

"Weelll, I wasn't going to say anything," the Doctor joked.

"Shut up," she reprimanded him. She gave his arm a light smack as she walked past him. He laughed softly as she stepped out of the room.

After a quick shower and a change into pajamas, Rose walked the halls of the TARDIS in search of the Doctor. She had already checked the console room, and was surprised to not find him there doing his almost constant maintenance.

She ran her hand along the wall, letting the ship guide her, and came upon the library, where a familiar shape sat on the couch.

"Hello there, have a nice shower?" the Doctor asked her.

"Yes, I did," she replied as she flopped down on the couch next to him.

There were a few scattered books on the table. The assortment was as eccentric as the man that sat next to her. Books on various types of physics, the complete Lord of the Rings series in one book, The Hunger Games, storybooks from other planets, Summer Falls by Amy Williams, and a little red book full of Sherlock Holmes stories.

"So, reading tonight?"

"Sort of," the Doctor replied. "Since it seems you're sticking around for a while, I wanted to start teaching you more things. We'll start with my language, because teaching everything else will be easier if you know it."

He handed her a book in Gallifreyan and she groaned.

"Welll, if you never want to be able to read the displays on your-" The Doctor teased.

"Okay, okay!" She interrupted, and took the book from him.

With a grin, the Doctor began teaching Rose the language he grew up with.


End file.
